…about jobs for the boys!
Having been incredibly organised and making a spreadsheet of my finances, it turned out I have an alarming minus £4.19 disposable income per week (result: misery). Moving out of catered halls and into a house requires this kind of responsible planning to ensure participation in the weekly Asda shop (without any ‘lifting’) and avoidance of scurvy. So…I need a job.
I pretty quickly found one, which involved selling sports based gap years over the phone, something I am presumably capable of with the wealth of customer service experience I have, not to mention my delightfully charming phone manner!
“Moving out of catered halls and into a house requires this kind of responsible planning”
James* promptly responded to my application email to book a 6:30pm telephone interview. At this point I will add that the job description stated an ideal candidate would have a broad interest in sport, which admittedly I may have exaggerated slightly in my application. I didn’t lie; in my fifteen-year-old sporting prime I was on all of the school sports teams. And anyway, if you believe Pushkin, a deception that elevates us is apparently dearer than a host of low truths; or perhaps he was just lying.
I spent a good forty minutes of my precious time preparing for this interview, doing the usual…researching the company, planning my answers and rehearsing scenarios with my boyfriend (who wasn’t shy to remind me that James would probably hear my Liverpool accent and hang up; its lovely having a supportive man in your life). Despite my other half’s attempt to scupper my confidence I was ready to smash the interview and secure myself a nice little job to ease my financial worries (result: happiness).
“A deception that elevates us is apparently dearer than a host of low truths”
6:30 came and James, prompt, on the dot, called:
“Hi Floss how are you?”
“Hello James! I’m great thank you, and yourself?” *happy happy breezy breezy*
“I’m fine thanks. Right I’m just going to give you a quick sports trivia quiz.”
What?! This is not what I had prepared for. Hoping desperately it was going to be something Great British Bake Off related, because that has been the extent of my sport following this year, I acted casual and invited James to start his quiz. He wanted to know what the four tennis grand slams are. That probably sounds simple to someone who is into sports, for example my boyfriend, whom I had demanded should leave the room and so was well out of ‘loudspeaker and helpful note’ range. I asked if they are people; apparently they’re not. I managed to answer correctly to how many players are on a rugby union team, a lucky guess which did little to impress James.
“Okay. Now can you give me four ruby league positions?”
By that time I thought perhaps dickhead was one.
You may be surprised to hear that I didn’t get the job. Surely I’m perfectly capable of making a gap year spent playing footers in America sound glamorous, isn’t ‘America’ the key word? James quite clearly just wanted to give those jobs to boys and knew how to weed us girls out, how dare he ask me about sport for a sports job!
It couldn’t possibly have been anything to do with me.
Floss Binks
Photo: Kerrie _ via Flickr
