The Interview

“All I ever wanted was to be wanted,” I thought to myself as I was filling out the job application. I hadn’t done one of these in years. My hand trembling at the thought of another interview. The waiting room was empty, even though the listing touted that positions were filling up fast. It looked like a hospital waiting room. I kept thinking how at any moment a surgeon would burst through the door, bloodied scrubs, and tell me that he did his best. But no. Just a regular waiting room. I glanced back down at application and gazed at the questionnaire portion. Question 21: What do you want? I had to admit, this simple question put me deep in thought for the last ten minutes or so. I tried to move past it, but found myself digging deep for an answer. An answer that a prospective employer would want to hear, not one that would have them staring at me wide-eyed, mouths agape. “What do I want”? Many answers flooded my brain. I wanted a lot of things. To be rich seemed like the logical response. Financially stable at the very least. If I was rich I’m sure it wouldn’t last though. My giving nature had put my pockets in a tight squeeze on more than one occasion. You see, giving makes me happy. If I was rich, others would be rich as well. And that would put me right back in the position I currently find myself in. Jobless and broke. I guess broke was too vague a descriptor of my troubles. I wasn’t digging in the seat cushions broke. I was more of the pawning most of my possessions broke. I’d done it many times in my life. I would buy something to make me happy, which it did, for a time. Then I found myself just staring at the items collecting dust and hating myself for spending the money. “I want to be happy?” The fact that it came to me as a question proved that I didn’t know what would make me happy. I was happy. I mean, I had been happy. I honestly couldn’t remember the last time I had actually been really happy. I knew contentment very well. But to be honest, happiness had always eluded me. Sad, broke and nothing to show for it. I looked up from the clipboard as if someone had heard my thoughts aloud. But, the quietness of the empty room just made me come to another conclusion. “ I want to not be lonely,” I thought. I mean, I wasn’t lonely at all though. I had friends. I had a job. Not anymore, but it was there before all of this. I had a loving wife. I couldn’t think about all that now. It was the past. Time to move on. I tapped the pencil against the clip board and sighed. As I continued to ponder the question, one of the office doors opened up. I looked up and saw a woman with bright red hair. “They are ready to see you now,” she said. I grabbed the application off the clipboard and started to explain that I didn’t finish filling it out. The woman just smiled and said, “No need. We just use them to get an idea of who we are hiring. Everyone gets placed no matter what.” A feeling of both relief and confusion came over me as I followed her into another room. Inside there were three men, all in business attire, sitting behind a long table. One of them motioned me to a single seat in front of them. I sat down and nervously straightened my tie and thought how the table looked like something I would’ve bought in the past. “I wonder how long that would’ve made me happy for” I said in my head before fearing that somehow my face might convey the thought. The man in the middle glared at me and, in a booming voice, said, “So, now that you are here, I’d like to get right into it!” God-like, his voice I thought. He must practice that tone frequently. No wonder he’s sitting behind that long table and I’m just another interviewee. I mustered my best job interview face and prepared myself for what I felt was going to be a long interrogation. He then looked down at a paper in front of him, then to the men on both sides of him. And back at me. “So, he said in his god-like voice, I guess the most important question would be...what do you want?”