by ekie
I didn’t get the job.
I knew that I shouldn’t get my hopes up. Yet despite that, I did. I got my hopes up. I honestly believed that the prayers of my mother, that the chanting of a woman I knew (she said her chanting had never failed) and that the whole positive-image thing would work, that I would get it, that I could do it. But maybe the gods and goddesses could see right through me to my atheistic soul and decided to spite me, or maybe I made a mistake in the interviews, or maybe I just didn’t try hard enough, though I tried as best I could. I went in for four interviews. Four. Got dressed up, in clothes that don’t belong anywhere in summer, drove the forty minutes in, parked, shook hands, smiled. And they didn’t even bother to call me to say I didn’t get it. They just said they’d get back to me by Friday if I got it, and it’s Monday now, and so, I didn’t. Is it really so hard to just pick up the phone or shoot an email? “Sorry, but………”
I guess it is.
It’s been explained to me that I experience feelings differently from neuro-typical people. NT’s have emotions in their heads. I have them in my body. I have a physical reaction to happiness, a physical reaction to sorrow. Which is why I normally refuse to get my hopes up about anything until it actually happens – because disappointment can be so painful that it literally immobilizes me.
Lesson learned: don’t get your hopes up. Because when you float up, you will crash down, and crashing hurts.
In the meantime, I push on through the rain (why is it 60 degrees and raining in the middle of summer?) and contemplate making big signs that say KIKE and showing up at Ben Stiller’s premiere of Tropic Thunder. People would get mad, and I would laugh and very patiently explain that it is funny, they just have to lighten up a little. Jews are 1-3% of the US population. People with disabilities are 20%. Yet why is it that if we offended Jews we’d get arrested, charged with hate crimes, the FCC would never allow the word ‘kike’ in a movie without rating it R, yet the word ‘retard’ can be shouted out for all the world to hear and nobody cares?
9:37 am. My time. Monday. Apparently it’s already Tuesday in Australia. Not here.
3 Comments
12 August, 2008 at 2:40 am
Here’s my post, Words Hurt: The “R” Word. It covers more than the Stiller movie. I linked to this post and as many others as I can find.
13 August, 2008 at 10:05 am
4 interviews and no explanation? Sounds like a crap employer to me.
13 August, 2008 at 11:18 am
Oh Ekie, and i had my fingers crossed so badly for you. But, i have to agree with activevoice. After all that trouble, and not even an explanation! You’re better of not working there.
In any case, give them a ring and ask them if they could please tell you why you did not get the job. They should not be too surprised to get a call like that – lots of people ask for an explanation, becasue it is the only way to find out where your weaknessess are in the job marked and see if you can do something about it (and not necessarily disability related). Also, it shows them you are a go-getter and their loss that they didn’t hire you.
It sounds corny, but there will be something better out there.
(And i must absolutely go and google that ‘kike’ word. Never heard it before…. )