I know I could have said simply, 'I had a job interview', but that would not give me the pants-tingling sense of smug achievement that I so crave to quell my inner sense of worthlessness.

Anyway, it was a panel interview with a scribe. He seemed nice but quite timid. He was like the world's tallest field mouse.

I flounced into the room all professionalism and enthusiasm and false confidence, shook hands with everyone, promptly forgot all their names, and dumped everything I'd brought with me onto the chair nearest mine - which, despite its outward appearance as being identical to the many other unoccupied chairs in the room, turned out to be Where the Scribe Sat. I learned this when the scribe timidly started moving my things Elsewhere, clearly hoping not to Make a Scene. I did that for him by using loud phrases like OH HA HA I AM SORRY and SORRY SORRY and I'LL MOVE THAT FOR YOU and OOPS, I'LL GET THAT. By this point the rest of the panel must have been staring at me in open-mouthed wonderment. Walks like a lady, talks like a tanked slapper.

I don't know why they bothered with the scribe, as the main interviewer also wrote keenly and quickly as I spoke. She did this whilst never looking down, so that her hand convulsed about the page under apparently supernatural guidance, a grotesque dancing puppet of the underworld, while her unblinking eyes never left mine and her smile remained frozen in place so that I twitched in my desperate efforts to look at anything but the lipstick on her teeth. I couldn't look at her hand, I couldn't look at her mouth and the woman was not blinking for fuck's sake so I couldn't look at her eyes either, not that I enjoy eye contact at the best of times. By this point I was waiting for someone at this bizarre tea-party to shout: 'Clean cup! Clean cup! Move down!'

To digress for a moment: this is an issue I have in conversations. I am not a big user of eye-contact. I find it awkward looking people in the eye for more than a couple of seconds, which is why in interviews, I like having a panel. It means I can break my eye-contact into safe morsels - a couple of seconds for you, sir, and now I direct my gaze leftward to yon colleague! So what I think interview rooms need is a Thing for Looking At. Its specific purpose would be for people to look at so they don't have to look at each other. I am not sure what exactly this Thing for Looking At would be, but it would have to be something that commands attention so that you could be sure that your gaze would definitely be drawn to it.

Perhaps something along the lines of a big stick spray-painted gold, with a glittering g-string of dubious ownership dangling limply from the top.

Let me share my vision with you in MS-Paint.

Anyway, I managed to bluster my way through the interview well enough and then blunder my way through the editing test at the end when they locked me in a room with no clock and told me I had 20 minutes. When it came time to leave, I graciously thanked the lady for interviewing me and tried to let myself out of this circus of nightmares. I pressed the button next to the door like she'd shown me on the way in. I pressed the button and then pushed on the door, which did not budge. She watched, giving me that look you give someone when you want to appear ready to leap to their aid at any moment, but have no real intention of doing so. I tried again.

Press the button, push at the door. Nothing. Press the button, try the handle?

Nope.

All the while the interview lady is throwing in things like 'no, now you - yes, that's right, now push the - yep ... yep'. Coaching me through my traumatic door fail experience.

I put all my saddlebags down in order to concentrate. This was getting embarrassing. I had flown interstate to convince these people that I was worth hiring because LOOK AT MY SMARTS, and I was being pwned by a door.

Eventually I worked out that I had to press the button and simultaneously push at the door. Ha. I snatched up my things, pausing only to catch the small fish my trainer had tossed me, and emerged blinking and quivering into the daylight.

That was weeks ago now. To my surprise, I found out today that I have advanced to the next round. I hate to think what the other candidates were like.

---

Two random things of randomness:

1. Apparently I snap at invisible flying objects with my teeth when I sleep.

2. While I was supposed to be working today, I wasn't able to make procrastination animal biscuits so I drew this procrastination drawing instead.

It is a pillow crying and eating a doughnut, in film noir.