Big City Interview Part 1: Lost in the Concrete Jungle
This day was about time for a good old-fashioned Proper Interview. Not an interview over the phone, or with a staffing agency, or through one of those garbage questionnaires, but one where I had to physically haul my ass to some office building to speak directly with the people who might eventually be my supervisors. More than that, actually--it was a Big City Interview. In contrast to the small-scale franchises or local businesses I usually applied to, this job was in a building tall enough for Spider-Man to swing off of, and to say I was intimidated would be an understatement. But I'm getting ahead of myself.
The first thing to note about this journey is that I got dressed in a minor rush; part of that process involved unbuttoning the the top two buttons of my dress shirt to put it on easily, and loosening my tie slightly to ensure I wasn't choking. Now, I want to point out that I was being strategic here, not lazy. After all, I don't need to look completely sharp while I'm driving. You might think I would have the intelligence to correct those shortcuts before the interview started. You would be wrong.
Now, despite my being in a rush, I decided to leave early just in case I wound up running into any problems, and this turned out to be correct enough assumption. See, the job I was applying to was located in a skeevy part of town. Not scummy--I don't think there was gang violence or anything--but most of the buildings and roads were cheap-looking and poorly maintained, with the notable exception of the massive billboards every few blocks. But the company I was applying to was anything but "skeevy"; on the contrary, it was shiny and green, a distinction sharp enough to fuel a dozen generic YA novels about class warfare.
As such, the campus of the offices where I would find myself that day were locked behind those kind of gates that make you validate parking with cards that they print out before they a metal arm swings up to let you drive in. I was not familiar with these sorts of machines, so naturally when I pulled up next to the parking pass dispenser machine, I was too far away to reach. I tried to stick my arm out, but no dice. I eventually had to kill the engine to my car, open the door, unbuckle my seatbelt, hit the button through the open car window, watch the paper come out and the arm swing up, close the car door, put my seatbelt back on, start my car up again, and move on my way.
The buildings were only a fraction of this size, but this is how they felt. Source: Free_photos via Pixbay
Now, this campus was a big place, with at least 5 different buildings for who knows how many organizations, few of which were labeled. All I had to go by was an address and suite number, but before I could even manage that, I had to find a place to park. I absolutely hate being stuck in my car, driving around without knowing where to park, so my policy when entering a new place is to find the first available spot I can see and wander around on foot. Right after I pulled in past the initial gate, I was directly facing a parking structure, so I pulled right on in there. There was another gate with an arm, so I was not--and still am not--sure that I was meant to park there, but when I pressed a button on an intercom the gate swung open so I moseyed on in and parked next to a black Honda Odyssey.
(Well, yes, the parking structure did have the word "visitor" on it, but other areas of the campus had the word "guest" used to refer to different parking spots, and will go to my grave without knowing the difference between the two.)
At this point, I got out of the car and examined myself. This time, I dressed myself properly. I had showered and my nice shoes were tied tightly on my feet. I had even thought to bring masking tape to help pick away at the cat hair that was all over my clothes. Now properly prepared for a legitimate interview, I set off to find the right building.
I immediately failed. All of the buildings on the corporate campus looked identical--massive, generic blocks of concrete and glass, with unit numbers hidden on one seemingly random face of the building. So I walked around, here and there, left and right. There were other people walking around, too. Some wore badges, but I couldn't check to see if they were from the company I was applying to without being creepy about it. Others wore headphones. The people seemed to come from all races, ages, and creeds.
Eventually I found one shorter guy with pathetic facial hair and asked him where I should be headed, which was right in the general direction of the parking structure, and specifically at a building I had walked past before after being unable to find the unit number on its side.
In order to properly explain what happened here, let me whip out MS Paint.
This is the path I had taken after leaving the parking structure (the N is me, with "N" standing for "Noodlehead"):
That big rectangular building in the center would eventually prove to be my destination, but since I couldn't see the unit number on it I walked right past it. All I saw was two small doors specifically labeled for electricians. Now, after talking with the guy, I found myself traveling back, looking at the building again:
After looking at what seemed to be the fourth and final side, I finally saw the unit number I was looking for. This side had a door, but it was completely unlabeled, which was the best option I had at the moment. At this point, I had maybe 10 minutes until my interview, so I wasn't running short on time, but I still needed to get into the building. I knew beforehand that I needed to call someone from the company to unlock the door for me, so I figured that this was the time to take out my phone.
It is around this time that I finally realized that my fly had been completely open all this time, revealing my blue boxer briefs for everyone to peruse. This, at least, I fixed.
I called the number I was given, hoping that I would see someone walk through the door, thus confirming that I wasn't completely lost. The person on the phone told me that she would open the door for me, so I waited a few minutes for someone to appear behind the door. They never did. I called again and asked if she was waiting for me, and she said she was--and she mentioned something about an elevator. There was no elevator outside, so I apologized, explained I was a little lost and would try to fix my situation shortly. So I wandered around a little more and was struck with A Revelation.
Apparently, my sense of direction was so monumentally shitty that I completely misunderstood the size and shape of the building I was walking around. Had I just kept going straight after leaving the parking structure, instead of turning right, I would have realized that the building was concave, and not a rectangle, and the entrance was very prominent and obvious. But instead I took the longest way around possible, confusing both myself and my potential employer.
So, in summary:
This is the true path I took. The interview hadn't even started, and I already felt like a dumbass.
In an endless fog of unemployment, temp agencies attempt to be a shining beacon, lighting the way to a bright future of gainful employment. But in reality, they are anything but. My local area was swimming in temp agencies, and every time I entered one, I would dress up in a spiffy suit and tie, prepare a resume, get an interview with someone from the agency, and leave with the promise that the company would work hard to find me a great company to work for.
This would never actually happen.
It didn't matter if I called the agency every week, if I filled out all the paperwork on time, or if I just ignored them like they told me to do--the agency would always ghost me with such regularity that I wondered if I was haunted.
This process went on for years and years, across at least a good half-dozen different agencies, until one day I got a call from one asking me to come in for an interview. I said yes, of course, and then tried to get myself ready.
I failed in no less than four ways.
Firstly: I had planned to take a shower right before I left, to ensure I was fresh and clean and didn't offend my interviewer's nostrils. Well, I tried to do that...only to be met by a shower that was so pathetically lukewarm that I didn't have a choice but to leave after only washing my pits. After all, it was cold out, and I didn't want to risk being any more cold and wet more than I needed to be.
Secondly: cats. I have them. three, in fact. And this means cat hair, everywhere, all the time, with more strands appearing the more you try to brush them away. Cat hair, of course, is particularly notable on dark-colored suit jackets and slacks, and of course those are the only appropriate colors for a man who wants to get a job without bewildering an employer.
Thirdly: shoes. I have a very shiny pair of dress shoes that I have borrowed from my dad without any real intention of returning. I have heard that they were very expensive, and they look it, giving my every step a debonair flair without being tremendously uncomfortable. So naturally I didn't realize that I was wearing my daily New Balance sneakers until I was over halfway to the interview.
Fourthly: The interview was very close to the library, and I forgot to get the books that I wanted to turn in that day.
All these left me standing outside my car after parking it at my destination, vainly attempting to pick cat hairs from my suit jacket, and hoping I didn't smell that bad. I remembered I had a pair of black Vans sneakers in my trunk, which weren't exactly fancy but were definitely better than my usual sneakers which had a big white N on each side. I eventually realized that I had done all I could to save me from my fate, and moved toward the office.
The office building had one of those touchscreen directories, which was tremendously unhelpful as it just let me know what number was associated with each business without letting me know where I could actually find the place I was looking for. Luckily, I didn't have to wander around that much to find it.
So I did the usual bit of ringing a bell to summon a receptionist, then waited for her to appear. Because we are in The Future, the "bell" was actually a bell-shaped button on a plastic remote. The receptionist appeared, carrying a clipboard with a blank form on it, and she directed me to a side room after telling me that the guy I was going to speak with was running late. I was not given the clipboard.
So I sat there. And waited. and waited. Probably a good 20 minutes of just me sitting in this small room, at a round desk, staring through the clear door I walked through and waiting for someone to appear.
Slowly, I began to realize that this wait would actually work in my favor. If I was sitting opposite the room's only entrance, the employer would have no choice but to sit down without walking around me--and with me sitting down, he would never be able to see my shitty sneakers and fur-covered pants!
So down I sat, waiting for someone to walk through the door. I eventually considered looking at the news on my phone, hyper-aware of my surroundings to put it away at the first sign of someone through the door.
Eventually, after what seemed like forever, a guy who looked like Eddie Murphy cosplaying as Michael B. Jordan appeared. He was carrying the clipboard from earlier, which now had a copy of my resume added to it. He sat down and complemented me on my attire, and if there was any irony in his statement I'm going to willfully ignore it.
We then spent the interview going down my resume. He felt that my work history should be up top, rather than my skills, and he had me go through each of my jobs in detail, and some of my skills like Excel.
Random trivia: If you have even the vaguest conceptual knowledge of what programming might be like, and you want to know how to be more marketable, google "Vlookup", a particularly useful Excel formula. Mentioning that is like the #1 way to seduce an employer.
Anyway, the employer was friendly if a bit hurried, and after he finished doodling all over my resume he gave me his card, and the cards of some of his coworkers, shook my hand, and left. He never saw my shoes. Nor did he give me the critiqued resume, making me wonder exactly what the point of writing over it was.
He told me that he would email me some forms to fill out--something that he said he would do before the interview, and which never occurred--and booked it out of there to do something more important.
The first thing I noticed was that parking was a pain. Every spot seemed to have a sign threatening a tow if you didn't know exactly what you were doing, which felt almost like a personal insult to someone as endlessly clueless as myself. Eventually I just parked next to one of the least scary signs near the main building, and nervously shuffled inside. Thankfully a receptionist inside confirmed that my car wasn’t going to get kidnapped by a random tow truck while I was trying to make myself look like a potential employee.
I took the elevator to the second level and noticed that the whole building felt...dingy. The carpet was an old, ugly gray color and was torn up in places. It wasn't, like, Hell's Kitchen bad, but it was a notable step down from most potential employers that I've visited.
“Pathway”'s main office was better--but not great. The biggest piece of furniture I saw was a series of shelves with anime-ish figurines inside them, which was right to the left of me as I entered. Now I’m not the biggest weeb in the universe, but I still felt surprised that I did not recognize a single character. The office itself had no carpet. The whole place felt rather empty, which made sense as I later learned that they had recently moved. As for actual humans who breathe and stuff, the place was populated with less than a dozen young adults who, in my brief survey of the office, appeared to largely be Asian.
After finding the person I was supposed to talk to, I was led into a side room that appeared to be a sort of break room with a water cooler, fridge, and a hybrid Foosball/pool table. You know, every employee’s biggest dream There was also a shelf completely filled with enough junk food to make the average soccer mom demand an exorcism. In there, I was told to fill out an application, which asked for all sorts of information. I very slowly and carefully filled out the stuff that was already on my resume, and omitted information that I didn't feel comfortable providing at that time (namely, my SSN).
Then, I was directed into an adjacent room that was sparsely furnished with a couch, class table, and a TV with a PS4. I could not see any games, but then again, it’s not like I was going to rifle inside their cabinets—I don’t think “snooping” is a marketable job skill. At least, not for this line of work.
When I had applied for this job, I did so with the knowledge that the company localized games that were initially published in some foreign language, so the game console was hardly a big surprise, but a part of me hoped that there would be copies of games that the company had worked on strewn about, players vigorously looking for errors that would need to be patched out later. Instead, there was only this one black box, next to this one black TV.
Eventually someone walked in, and that was where the real interview began. He refreshingly asked me all the typical questions: "tell me about yourself", etc. The only unusual stuff was asking about my gaming habits--I mentioned Mario Odyssey and Fallout: New Vegas. I kinda feel like he was hoping that I would mention some of the games that his company had worked on, but that didn't happen.
I was then informed that my job would be to help translate text for Korean games--that is, someone would give me a vaguely-comprehensible literal translation of some Korean text, and I would be told to rewrite it so it flowed naturally in English. They were specifically looking for someone who didn't know Korean. The problem, then, was that in this particular medium, the context for the text I would be translating would not always be available, and often I would have to guess at certain details.
After that interview, I was directed to a keyboard in front of a tablet, and told to complete a test. It involved, well, doing exactly what I described in the previous paragraph. I had a spreadsheet and was told to look at one cell of garbled nonsense and write what I thought it was trying to say in an adjacent cell, without any information about what the game was about or how its magic system worked or any other seemingly relevant details.
Naturally, I ran into a technical error partway through. I was able to restart the program to solve the issue, but I would up losing all of my progress in the effort. I started my guesswork from scratch and hoped that it wouldn’t be counted against me. After all, the proctor gave no indication that the test was timed.
After the test, the interviewer led back into the room with the PS4, and I asked him questions to show that I was actually interested in this. He said that he couldn't say every game that the company had worked on due to NDAs, but he then claimed that he had worked on MapleStory and a handful of other games that I only vaguely recognized.
This confused me a bit. I don't know anything about the way this practice is completed, but why would a company not be able to name previous projects? And why can I not find any mention of Bridgeway on MapleStory's website or Wikipedia page?
However, I did not voice those concerns. Instead, the interview essentially wrapped up then and there. As I left the office, I looked back and the cabinet with the anime-ish figurines and deduced that they were all tied to previous projects that the company had worked on, which were all games that I was too snobbish to bother with.
When I walked back outside, my car was still there and had not been abducted by rogue tow trucks.
