Your Third Round Job Interview with a Manatee
Your handshake… Was it too tight? Your dad would say so. It was clammy. Salt-watery. Don’t think too much about the handshake — even if it wasn’t really a handshake since you were grabbing his limp flipper too tightly. You need this job. And not everyone gets past this point.
He’s wearing a suit, the manatee. It’s tailored around his fat, gray neck. His tie’s got little embroidered clam shells. White mollusks on blue backing. Blue — it’s a power color. Strong, like hurricane waves or riptide. Like executives with leathery gray skin.
You know you shouldn’t have worn the red tie today. You had a choice and it was the wrong one. He looks at your chest when he begins, hesitantly,
“This is your… Third round interview so far.”
You don’t reply. You sit on the chair in front of his desk. It’s moist. There’s a clump of seaweed attached to one of the legs. It reeks of brine.
Three rounds of interview. Of only two, the recruiter had lied. But not everyone can get an entry-level role doing front-end testing at a mid-level West Coast SaaS startup (with benefits). They may get past the online interviews, but that’s only because most people are allowed to get this far, the manatee. But not everyone gets past the manatee. Will you? The thought makes you want to vomit blood.
He smiles with big bulbous jowls. “Shelley and her team were happy to pass on feedback when you spoke with them last month. Her, ‘pod,’ so to speak,” he adds.
You don’t know who Shelley is. She’s a name on letterhead that you followed up with exactly four hours after the cessation of your interview two months ago, but beyond that, she doesn’t exist. You don’t want her to exist. You just want a job. And so you nod, affirming the manatee.
“It was nice to meet her team,” you say. “Or, ‘pod.’”
He frowns. You’re not allowed to use that word in a professional environment like this. You should have known better. The manatee looks at something on his laptop. It churns, like it’s a boat’s propeller, about to rip off and scar you and the manatee both.
He swallows. Gurgles, more like. A blowhole discharges but he doesn’t look embarrassed, no, because it’s a powerful action for an executive.
“I took a look at some of the exercises you completed,” he says.
You don’t remember them, the exercises. They may have been logarithmic problems or calisthenics. That was four months ago. When you were just as poor. You’ve been living with a woman twice your age since then. You met her online and she owns an apartment in the city and you need a bed and somewhere to store your massive collection of stupid, stupid red ties. She looks like the woman on the manatee’s desk, in a photo. The woman’s got her arm around the manatee.
In that picture, he has things you don’t. Sunglasses. Margaritas, in both fins. A blue-white Hawaiian shirt unbuttoned to his mid-chest. An income.
The manatee laughs. A bellow sort of laugh. It goes on too long, as if he were hit with a yacht. You notice the batch of coral on his desk, all sharp. He’s got pens sticking out of the little holes at odd angles. And a Top Sales award next to it.
“Your resume is impressive,” he says. “Do you have any questions on the role?”
How is a manatee sitting at a desk?
But that’s an asinine question to ask in a job interview. He’s got a massive, flapping, wet tail and an income and not everyone can have both of those — maybe one, but not usually both, not in this economy.
“What is the most challenging blocker your team resolves on a daily basis?” you croak.
“Great question,” he lies. He talks at you but looks at the poster of kelp on the wall, avoiding eye contact. That’s a bad sign. You lean forward and smile. You try to win back the manatee but it feels like an inhuman task, winning the approval of an underwater mammal in exchange for income. Makes you nauseous.
Ten minutes ago you were in the handicap stall across from the women’s restroom, vomiting into the toilet between hits of your vape cart. Something in the bowl was red. Like your tie, the blood, red. It’s a power color, you coped. Powerful, like your haircut that your father recommended, as the manatee doesn’t respect long hair. And not everyone gets past the manatee, do they?
The manatee looks at you. He squints and smiles with fleshy black lips. He studies you. Whiskers twitch and a bead of slobbery moisture drips onto his desk. He finally asks, as if he doesn’t know, “What makes this role attractive for you?”
Food, you want to say. Kelp, to be relatable. And those are terrible answers. The truth: you want to swim free. Like him, you want to follow the warm water channels along the Gulf Stream and cozy into inlets and migrate with the ones you love — and you can’t do that without an income. So for now you need an office with air conditioning and a copier with salt dried on top of touchscreens. You need the job and for that you need the manatee’s respect and love and mercy. But you can’t say that in a job interview.
It’s too much. You say something else. But it’s not like what you say is memorable or important enough to get anything more than a smile.
He nods. At your exit, he declines to rise. If he could, if he didn’t have a massive meaty tail under that desk, he wouldn’t, anyway. He just hands you a limp flipper and brays, “You’ll be hearing from our team soon.”
That’s a saltwater lie. Your handshake is wet and your tie is red. And you know, deep down, you’re not going to make it past the manatee.
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