Halogen bulbs clicked into ignition on the Home Essentials brand torchiere lamp with gooseneck extension, illuminating the game-room-turned-home-office. The gooseneck’s bulb shone brighter than the base lamp’s bulb and was pointed upward to enhance the yellow glow that bathed the strewn papers and flattened cardboard lining of a productivity-inspiring nest. Four navy blue walls were missing their intended shelving and Nanoleaf lights above the desk and computer monitors were meant to accentuate the dark hue with splashes of neon brilliance. In their stead hung a strand of last year’s Christmas lights affixed with thumbtacks at the vertices of the walls and ceiling. The single window looking into the backyard had the blackout curtain drawn because the glare would cloud the monitor. Simple math from a quickly scanned memory of Newton’s prism experiment explains that blue light from the burning hydrogen ball in the sky paired with the blue light emitted from a 4K LED monitor capable of 30fps canceled out the high resolution and picture sharpness. For an optimal comfort setting picture, GE’s energy saving bulbs didn’t break the eyes or bank.

Daniel Duncan sat down at the helm of an insecure battle station and turned on his work laptop to log in for the day. He found Cole already waiting for him, sitting in the recliner that faced the TV perpendicular to the back of the office chair. “Morning Cole,” Daniel greeted, “I was just thinking about you. You been here long?”

“My ears were ringin’” Cole gesticulated, “So I decided to head over. Call it a hunch.” He responded in a painfully northern accent, pronouncing “call” like his own name.

“Ya know you coulda played something. Got tons of stuff on the Xbox. I just usually watch YouTube these days though. I feel like all the time I’m able to save by working from home is converted into the intensity of the work I do here. I’m just too tired to play anything.”

“Nah, I didn’t want to wake you. Not this time.”

“That’s so sweet, you gon make my pussy cry. Listen, while I gotcha, d’you mind sticking around to listen in? I have an interview.”

 Cole agreed to listen and see where, if at all, Daniel was messing up his interviews. He’d been submitting resumes to all legitimate and legitimate-looking job roles posted on LinkedIn, Indeed.com, and Google careers search. Of the hundreds of emails, resumes, and resume forms sent out, only four had resulted in an interview. A failed interview. A start-up company claiming to be an autonomous Uber posted an information technology analyst role that looked promising. The recruiter passed Daniel’s name to the second-round interviewer, the second-round interviewer introduced him to the hiring manager, and the hiring manager set a time for all three of them to conduct the interview. The morning of the interview, he was emailed that the role had been filled. Daniel wasn’t sure if it hurt more to be told “no” or to not be responded to. He persevered by attaching his resume to job postings, filling out the information in his resume on the online forms of the same posting, then writing fanfic responses to prompts of job-specific behavioral, self-assessment, and background questions. Daniel had over one hundred talent search profiles on companies both foreign and domestic. Ireland, Germany, and Denmark all wanted foreign talent to emigrate and had companies willing to sponsor work visas for skilled individuals. Daniel’s inbox was full of reasons why his skills were evidently not needed.

The laptop screen displayed the white Dell logo against a blue background as the operating system awoke from hibernation; he never shut down the machine. The setup was hastily constructed in March 2020 when all non-essential OmniCard employees were instructed to work from home. Two monitors, one wide screen in the middle of the desk and another to the right turned horizontally, were connected by a docking station, and powered by a silver Dell Latitude 7400 laptop as a third screen underneath the widescreen. This Tetris composed the workstation. A fourth monitor sat left of the workstation. On the left side of the desk was a personal monitor. This one, not taken from the office in the rushed exodus, had been delivered by the company to all employees to assist with their home setup along with a “We’re All In This Together; Just WAITT” sticker in OmniCard colors once the two-week projected return date was exceeded by sixteen weeks. Then fifty-two weeks. The personal monitor was connected to a refurbished HP Rp5800 Retail System. What used to be a proud business’s point of sale solution was now silently struggling to manage twenty-three opened Google tabs, Spotify, Visual Studio Code, and perpetual tutorial programs for Python, js, Tableau, Blender, Unreal Engine, Android Studio, Swift, and Alteryx. Much to the not-so-silent frustration of its ignorant user.

Today, Daniel would take pity and summon the Task Manager to end all open programs so all resources could be dedicated to his Logitech webcam, unplugged from his workstation into the personal tower, and Microsoft Word to display his resume and pre-answered interview questions. Any day now the world would emerge from “these trying times” and the realization that work could proceed sans commute and office space would quickly be forgotten. Or worse, disingenuously pined for by executives who couldn’t measure point-in-time productivity and thus use quarterly outcomes as justification to remain in the office. This was going to be hard for the financial and financial technology companies as they had posted record quarters during the Pandemic, save for Q1 2020. Slowly, leadership and management were being recalled to the office as well as any volunteers willing to disregard CDC guidelines in the elevator. The excuse that you worried about your health and family’s safety if you returned to the office during a pandemic still worked. Opportunistic companies hungry for talent capitalized on the frustration by posting remote job roles. Opportunistic people used their work-from-home posture to take interview calls without arousing suspicion in the office.

Daniel authenticated into the OmniCard network, set his Slack inactive status to show after ninety minutes, and prepared himself for his interview. “How ya feelin’?” asked Cole.

“Pretty good. I know my stuff. It’s just a conversation after all.”

“Think you’ll get it? D’ya know who you’ll be talking to?”

“No.” Daniel flatly responded. “Just some recruiter whose name I’ll forget. I’m awful with names, the second someone tells me theirs I’m so worried about responding that while I practice it in my head, I’ve not actually heard it. Plus, you know how it goes. No one ever stays in the same role that long. No point in learning names.

“What’s the point then? You coulda spent the time you used applying to jobs to a skill you coulda mastered by now.”

“Could’ve. I’m not applying to be a master; I’m just trying to do what I do now but at home. Permanently.”

“Got your answers ready?”

“Yeah, all here. What’s your greatest strength—arms…What’s your greatest weakness—Boobs…Tell me about a conflict you’ve faced and how you dealt with it… Why are you leaving?... Tell us about yourself…Tell us about a time you demonstrated leadership…How’s your work-life balance—Could use some fuckin’ life…” Daniel went down the list of questions he found on themuse.com. His plan was to mute himself as the interviewer spoke, CTRL + F the question by keyword, and answer with what he had written. Cole began to sing: “Does anyone know where the love of god goes when the WebEx turns the minutes to hours? The searchers all say they’d have more time in their day if they turned any call into office hours.”

“People died in that song man, don’t make fun.”

“Yeah, and I’ll die of boredom. Why can’t this be an email? Hours of existence wasted I’ll never retrieve. I couldn’t die like the French call it so I have to do it the English way.”

“French die differently?”

“They call orgasms the little death. In English, we call it relief too though, but I prefer the Frog’s way.”

“So, are they like oui, oui, I’m dying!”

“Probably, like je splooge madame, voulez vous avec moi.” The pair giggled like schoolboys. “You’re supposed to be helping me,” Daniel reminded Cole.

“Fine, have you thought about lateral thinking questions?”

“What are those?” Daniel asked, spinning around.

“Those spurious ‘What am I guessing?’ type questions that tech companies say they use to see how you approach a complex problem. Because Google does ‘em, every company tries ‘em out in interviews, but you know the interviewer looked the answer up prior.”

“Gimmee an example.”

“Ricky Gervais did a whole bit on these. Romeo and Juliet. Romeo’s on the bed, and Juliet’s on the floor covered in water and glass. What happened? Romeo’s a cat and Juliet’s a goldfish. It’s just ‘What am I thinking?’.”

“But surely if I just keep talking, they’ll see me trying to work out the problem. I just need to keep talking until I come to a solution. Give me another one.”

“A man is found dead in the middle of an empty field. There are no tracks, footprints, or weapons found near him. Nothing is around him at all. He’s just dead, in a field. How’d he die?”

“Heart attack?”

“No. His parachute didn’t deploy.”

“You’re joking.”

“Jokes are funny, dude.”

“Fuck.” Daniel muttered.

“Quickly look up a few, they’ll probably ask you a popular one. Look up the bomber plan one.”

“What plane?”

“From World War II, U.S. bombers were getting’ shot to shit. So, for the ones that returned they asked all these smart guys to figure out what made them survive or where to place armor. D’you know how they figured out where to place armor?”

“Where all the bullet holes were.”

“No! Where they weren’t! The ones that came back full of bullet holes came back, right? So, it’s the spots that weren’t Swiss cheese that they upgraded.” Cole finished with a smug smile. Daniel blindly fumbled for his keyboard, pressing the space bar a couple of times.

“It’s fine,” Daniel stated. “I’m not gonna stress right before this thing. It’ll work out or it won’t. You can’t tell me this right before they call.”

“Don’t worry, I’ll be here. Just put it on speaker and mute it like you were gonna do and if it comes up, I’ll help.”

At 9:00 A.M. sharp, Daniel’s phone rang the Rick and Morty theme song. He waited, swallowing a couple of times to prepare his phone voice, and because only the desperate answer on the first ring. “Hello, this is Daniel Duncan speaking.” He coolly spoke holding back the heave of interview jitters in his chest and quickly tapped the speaker button. A professional woman’s voice responded with each word enunciated as a choir director would instruct.

“Hi Daniel, I’m the Recruiter from Wells Fargo calling in regard to the interest you expressed in the Lead Data and Analytics analyst role. How are you doing today?”

“Niiice. A lead role?”

“Shut up dick head!” hissed Daniel. He cleared his throat and unmuted, “I’m well, and yourself?”

“Fine thanks for asking. I see this is a remote position and your resume says you’re in Charlotte, correct? How’s it going out there?” Before making a life-altering decision, Daniel had to follow protocol and discuss the banal. It was like looking away in politeness when Grandma started digging in her purse.

“Oh, it’s not too bad. Had some rain but I’ve not been out much lately with all that’s going on.”

“You live in Fort Mill though, not Charlotte. She might know the weather in Charlotte and see you lied.” Cole whispered.

Daniel’s eyes bulged with unexpressed rage toward Cole.

“I hear ya, I hear ya. Okay, well I won’t take up too much of your time.” The Recruiter acknowledged to which Cole scoffed. Daniel coughed to cover it.

“No, no not at all. As long as it takes for me to convey how excited I am for this opportunity.”

“Wonderful, I’ll start with a little background of the team.”

Daniel muted. “It’s not a leadership position, that’s just what they name it. Like infosec engineers aren’t actual engineers.”

“That’s stupid.”

“You’re stupid, you’re supposed to be helping me!”

“Pay attention genius, she asked you something.” Daniel quickly unmuted; his phone voice resurfaced.

“I’m sorry, I had to take my Air Pods out and I missed that. Could you say that again? I’m so sorry.”

“No problem, Daniel, I just asked if you could tell me a little bit about yourself, what your current role is, and why you’re looking for a new role.”

“Certainly,” Daniel shot Cole a glare and turned around in his chair away from him. He answered the question as he practiced it. He casually answered each subsequent question, gliding through the answers methodically to display how each answer had been thought through from beginning to end and accounted for any deviations. He leaned back in his chair, affecting a man confident in his skills. The Recruiter was audibly taking notes with a keyboard as Daniel spoke. She repeated the buzzwords he’d placed in his answers—KPIs, metrics, automatability, collaboration, inclusivity, innovation—which let him know he not only had her attention but was leaving an impression.

“Thank you, Daniel, I really believe, with all you’ve shared with me, today that you’d make a great fit with the team. Skills wise you have everything they’re looking for and more importantly I think, you have a lot of the soft skills that can’t be taught that’ll definitely have an impact on the organization’s culture. I will definitely be passing your packet through to the manager. And I wanted to conclude with one more question before I open it up for you to ask me any questions you may have.”

“Okay!”

“How would you weigh a plane without a scale?”

Daniel spun around to Cole whose eyes were as wide as his.