Shaun Lewis: the Man, the Myth, the Legend

It’s been 2 weeks since I last updated and it’s Tuesday.

I absolutely suck at updating during the summer. I don’t know why, but whenever the weather starts to turn warm, I drop everything I’m doing and go outside and play. I can’t focus in the summer. It’s all the fault of public education. I’ve been trained to not have to focus during the summer. All those years of summer breaks have conditioned me. So, I apologize.

I need to tell a funny story right now. It’s a long one and it’s certainly a visual story, I’m definitely a visual learner, but I’m going to try to write it out for all you auditory people out there. You know who you are. Also, this is for anyone whom I told that I didn’t feel like telling the story because of cell phone minutes, I just woke up, whatever, etc., etc.

So, I had a job interview the other day — Friday, in fact — and it was a fiasco. I mean it really was. I didn’t even schedule the inteview; that probably caused the biggest problems. Some guy just called me on my cell phone and told me to show up somewhere. Actually, that’s not entirely true. Some guy did call me on my cell phone, but he asked me to drive some stuff to Michigan for a company. When I asked what I was driving he said, “Uh… racks.”

“Excellent,” I thought, “I’m running drugs.”

I had gotten this call as a result of Jason’s mom, who happens to have a lot of Mafia connections, so it wasn’t that much of a stretch. Anyway, the guy called me and told me he had met me before at a BBQ — kind of weird, but whatever, I guess. He proceeded to lay out the details of the Michigan job. Apparently, it’s a job where I get in a Ford F-150, drive a trailer of racks to Grand Rapids, Michigan and then drive home. It’s about an 11-hour drive, but everything is paid for — including a company credit card and a cell phone (sweet!). I agreed to the terms and prepared myself to drive to Michigan that night. Gary, the guy who called me, told me he’d set up an interview at the place for 10 a.m. Monday morning as well. Then he hung up.

I was pretty excited about the possible job, so I called a few people and told them. Then Gary called me back and told me I wouldn’t be going to Michigan after all because some guy who wasn’t supposed to show up showed up and they were going to let him drive. Blast. Gary also let me know he took the liberty of moving up my interview to today also. It was 3:30 in the afternoon when all this happened. “When is my interview, Gary?” I asked.
“Oh, just show up before 5,” he said.
“So, do you want me to leave now?”
“Yeah, that’s fine.”

I got in my car, drove up to the processing place where my interview awaited, parked my car, got out and was lost. The face of the plant presented an interesting problem I never imagined would be a problem: how do I get inside? There were two regular doors — one on the right, one on the left — and they were both placarded with signs that read, “Authorized Personnel Only.” Am I personnel? No. I can’t go in those doors then. In between them lay 7 or 8 shipping in receiving docks. Not wanting to do something wrong, I just climbed up the ledge of one of those and walked in the dock.

When I walked in, I noticed a number of things: 1) it was EXCRUCIATINGLY hot inside there and 2) this was a factory, man. It was how I envisioned a factory should be. There were sparks flying everywhere, a hovering cloud of metal particles in the air, etc. I was sort of excited about it all.

There was a gentleman walking out to a truck on the dock when I walked in and I asked him if I could find Henry Laws (the man Gary told me to see). “Yeah sure. Let me get him for you,” the guy said. I stood there at the “entrance” (used lightly) and waited. Henry walked up to me.
“Can I help you?” he said.
“Yeah,” and this is really where the fiasco part of the tale begins, “some dude called me on my phone and told me come down here for an intervie,.” I said standing there in my khaki cargo pants, t-shirt and baseball hat.
[Blank Stare as he looks me up and down]
“Oh. [long awkward pause] OK. Let me take you back to my office.” We started walking. “So, now what is happening?”
“Dude called me up and said, ‘Come down to this place for a job interview,’” I eloquently spoke with all my social tact and professionalism.
“Yeah. I don’t know about that. Let me give you to Richard.”
“OK,” I said.

I was lead back to an office and when I got to the door I saw another guy who was apparently about ready to be interviewed. He was dressed in a suit, had a briefcase — the works, man. “Oh, geez,” I thought. “This man is wearing a suit.” I walked into the office and sat down beside Karl, the man in the suit; Richard, the interviewer, was in front of us sitting at a desk. He began shuffling through some papers and talking. “Karl, your interview is scheduled for 4:30″ — it was 4:20 when he said that — “and, let’s see. I have your resume, and papers. Everything seems to be in order.” Then he looked at me. “You.”
“Yes?” I said.
He started looking through some papers. “I don’t have your resume, an application or anything.”
I interjected, “Yeah, you probably won’t.”
“OK. We’ll go ahead and interview Karl because he has an appointment. Why don’t you go sit in the lunch room and wait. What is your name?”
“Shaun,” I say.

He writes down my name and leads me back to the lunch room. The door is opened, I pick a table to sit down at and the self-doubt begins. “OK,” I thought, “you’ve made an idiot out of yourself so far, but it’s not entirely your fault. Just try to act professional despite what you’re wearing and how you’ve acted and you might get through this unscathed after all.” The result of my pep talk was that while in the lunch room, I got serious. I brought out my secret weapon: the power stance.

For those of you uninitiated in the power stance it’s fairly simple. The power stance I was using was the hands cupped slightly in front of onesself and resting on the desk. My back was erect and I looked, not put lightly, damn good. I sat there in my power stance waiting for Richard to return to the lunch room. People walked by the big glass window looking out to the factory floor and stared strangely at me, shaking their heads.

Time passed and my power stance started to falter. I slowly began slouching. My hand started to become loosely cupped. Suddenly, I woke up and straightened up. I looked at the clock; it read 4:35. Great, I thought. It’s only been 10 minutes. I sat there for another 15 minutes and my power stance started to falter yet again. “OK. I need a new power stance,” I realized. I cupped my hands and placed them underneath my chin because I kept dozing off. “Wait — no good. It looks like I’m praying.” I did the triangle maneuver with my hands. The triangle maneuver is where each fingertip touches its corresponding fingertip on the other hand; the palms do not touch in a triangle maneuver. This was working.

Five minutes later it wasn’t working. “Oh, forget it,” I thought, and fell into my Office Space pose. All I needed was a game of Tetris and some Cheetos spread across the table and it would’ve been perfect. 5 more minutes of that I realized Richard will be here any minute, so I should go back into my original power stance. I snapped back into it and no sooner than I regained my composure did Richard show up at the window and wave me back. “Ha ha!” I thought, “Time to show them who Shaun Lewis is.” And that I did. Apparently, when I snapped back into my power stance I created a problem. As soon as I stood up, my wallet got caught on the metal fold-up chair I was sitting in and knocked it over. I tried to catch it but only made it clamber on the floor longer. I walked out of the lunch room a failure.

At this point in my little journey, I didn’t care what happened anymore. It was too late to redeem myself, I thought. As we were walking back, I let go of all my tact (like I had much to begin with). I asked Richard what I was applying for, something I probably should’ve known already. He told me he didn’t know.

When we made it to his office, Karl was gone and it was just him and I. I sat across from him with my legs all sprawled out, casually leaning back in my chair. He began the interview by asking me my name. I told him. Then, he wanted to know what kind of jobs I had in the past. Normally, in an interview, one tries to make onesself sound better than they actually are. If you worked at a library, you use phrases like “maintained a catalog of materials” and “specialized in inventory.” Not me. Not at this juncture in my life, at least.
“Well,” I began, “I worked in a library where they had books. Before that I drove some cars for GM, my cousin let me work with his telecommunications company (only remotely professional-sounding thing). I also worked at a grocery store.”
“Mhmm,” he said and stared at me.

The interview continued and I pretty much lost all my inhibitions. As I started talking to Richard, the interview slowly turned into a normal conversation. We started talking about special interest things. I found out his daughter went to OU and I, for whatever reason, told him I liked to party. I still laugh just thinking about that. At one point his boss came in and he started acting professional in the interview again, but as soon as his boss left, he snapped back into casual conversation with me. It was really funny to experience. At the end of the interview, he gave me his business card, wrote down his extension number, and told me to call them if I hadn’t heard from them by Wednesday. From what it sounds like I got the job.

So, here’s a quick recap. A 21 year-old walked into a factory because some dude called him and told him to come down there. He showed up in a t-shirt and baseball hat without a resume, application or even an appointment. No one knew his name. He knocked over furniture in a lunch room, told the interviewer he “liked to party” and, I forgot about this, told the interviewer indirectly that his daughter probably did too and that’s why she was going to OU. After all of this, he’ll still probably get the job.

God, how I love this country.

UPDATE: America sucks, man. I didn’t get the job.