Jamie Drew has a blog

I’m Torn Between “Fuck You!” and “Thank You?”

— the reason I brought you in for an interview is your background in film. I like a messy CV; I hate the assembly-line CVs that come through here.

— well, I’m glad it was messy, then.

— so where did this interest start? Was it childhood?

— yes, my mum had a shelf full of of Schwarzenegger videos when I was little.

(This is an interview for a marketing job, by the way. This is only tangentially related.)

— I assume your taste has broadened since then?

— ha ha, yes, I’m more of a Kubrick guy these days.

— so what is it that brings you here today? What are you looking for? What is it you want to do eventually? What’s the goal?

— well, I’m looking for a career that’s creative, where I can utilise my ‘natural talents,’ and I want something challenging. I go a little bit mad very easily.

— okay, but what do you want to do? What job, specifically?

— er,

— not necessarily right away.

— …blue-skies thinking?

— yes.

— well, you know, I do a lot of writing in my spare time, always keeping busy.

(We have discussed this at length earlier in the interview. The interview has actually just been a series of questions I wasn’t prepared for because they were so unexpected; tell me about yourself, no, university is too far along, what do your parents do, where did you grow up, what took you down this path, and so on. He seemed interested in this aspect of my life, so I told him. I am very confused by this point in the conversation.)

— I guess, many years down the line, I’d like to be a working screenwriter. Oh, you’re writing that down. That’s interesting.

— I’m going to stop this here. I don’t think this is going to work out.

— oh. Okay.

— it’s not that you aren’t talented; I just think you should be doing that instead. Working towards that. You need to be a little more tenacious, I think. The trick is just to not go away until someone offers you a job.

— well… all right. It was nice meeting you, and I appreciate the… quick feedback.

— there’s no time for fucking around.

I actually did an unpaid trial shift at a Victorian gastropub in Holborn last week, even though I’ve done innumerable unpaid shifts in the past and none of them has ever led to an actual job. It was eight hours long, incredibly busy on a Thursday night: 5pm until about 1am. My prospective employer decided to work in another room for the evening so he couldn’t actually observe me on that shift but left me with a wonderful, helpful supervisor who worked here to support her blossoming acting career. I did well. I got along with customers, learned the ropes pretty quickly, made a lot of money in tips.

“I hear you did really well today,” boss-to-be said at the end of the shift.

I smiled at my supervisor for the evening: thank you. ”It took a while to get the hang of where everything was.”

“Well, so,” he said, yawning and checking his diary, “what I’ll do is, I’ll write up the rota and get you in for a second trial maybe next week.”

“Brilliant,” I said at the moment, but after I’d woken up a little on the bus half an hour later — “wait.”

A second trial shift? Eight more hours of unpaid work? All for a job which – to be frank – could be done by a trained golden retriever? Nobody had ever said anything about a second shift, and what then? How many hoops do they want me to jump through, exactly?

So, long story short: I didn’t answer the phone or return any calls the next day. I may not have a real job, but I still have that last, tiny scrap of self-respect.

Variations on the Phrase “You’re Probably Overqualified for This Job”

• and what did you learn from your second degree?
• and the first was an M.A., is that right?
• so why did you decide not to go into speech therapy?
• I see from your CV you spent a bit of time in healthcare…
• so why are you looking at the hospitality industry — would this be a career change or a quick stepping stone?
• would your freelance work interfere with the hours you can work here?
• what kind of skills can you bring from your volunteering?
• what kind of hours do you work at the… ‘Ministry of Stories’?
• wow, that’s a real place?
• so you give away your time for free.
• that’s interesting.
• would you be interested in an indeterminate number of unpaid trial shifts?

I’ve applied for about fifty jobs today, just the general kind of front-of-house or coffee or bar work, and I came across one that asked me to “show off my winning personality.” Which I usually dislike, but this time I just took the opportunity to tell one of my favourite jokes.

This is what I sent to them:

Two men are sitting at a bar at the top of the Empire State Building, just drinking, chatting, looking out over New York City as it happens beneath them. One of the men turns to the other and says “do you know, if you were to jump out that window, you wouldn’t actually hit the ground? When you get down to about the thirteenth floor, a gust of wind coming in from the East whips you up and around, and just plants you back where you jumped off.”

The other man waves him off. “That’s not true. There’s no way that can be true.”

But the first man persists: “no, it’s true. Here, watch.” And he launches himself out the window.

The second man watches as his new friend plummets towards the street, past the fiftieth floor, the fortieth, thirtieth, twentieth — and around the thirteenth floor, sure enough, the man gets whipped up and around, back up to where he jumped out the window. He takes a bow, sits back down and takes a swig of his drink.

Understandably, the first man is awestruck. When he collects his jaw from the floor, he says “I’ve got to try this!” and with that, he jumps out the window, plummets towards the streets of New York. Past the fiftieth floor, the fortieth – thirtieth – twentieth – tenth – and hits the ground. It’s a mess down there.

Back up on the top floor, the barman turns to the first man and says: “you know something, Superman? You’re a mean drunk.”

UPDATE: about half an hour after I sent this email, they called and invited me to interview on Monday. Success!

I’ve set the day aside for reading, which means I’ve read the screenplays for Bridesmaids, Source Code and a couple of Seinfeld episodes since lunch. I’m not entirely sure why I feel like my love for Seinfeld is a guilty pleasure, since it’s one of the best-written studio sitcoms out there, especially for ‘bottle episodes’ like The Chinese Restaurant, which I just finished off.

What’s interesting is the length of the script for The Chinese Restaurant – 40 pages for a 20-minute episode – most of which is taken up by the dialogue, and how it’s weighted heavily towards the first act. What I want to do is compare this to a script from the first season, when I assume the characters’ voices weren’t quite down yet.

I applied for a job as a ‘script developer’ the other day, but they told me that I’d need some professional experience to collect the £180-a-consultancy, so that’s one more awesome job I’m not remotely qualified for in this universe.

I hate this stupid universe.

In case it wasn’t obvious,

all of that fake reference was a joke. Or, if you prefer, a great big lie. I’m good at lying, and that is why you should consider my short story for publication in your magazine.

You need to provide two (2) references in order to apply for this position, it says. One of them academic, the other professional. I haven’t been at university for, oh, seven months now, so my clinical tutor probably doesn’t remember me… but the professional reference shouldn’t be a problem.

“Hey,” I say to an old workmate over facebook, “I need to check the address of that restaurant we both used to work at, which I don’t actually want to name on the internet.”

“Do you mean the place where part of the job description was to take it in turns to stand outside in the freezing Northern rain to hold a sign directing people to the restaurant that had ostensibly hired us as waiters?”

“The very same.”

“Yeah, that place doesn’t exist any more.”

“Well, fuck.”

“Well, fuck, indeed.”

I don’t know if this counts as one of the four-things-a-week I have to do in order to qualify for Jobseeker’s Allowance, but I wrote down I need to find a new professional reference in any case. Job done.

And then it hits me — I’ve listed myself as ‘self-employed’ as a freelance writer, which is technically true, and since we’re being technical about it, surely I can just list myself as a professional reference.

So in case you need a reference for James Drew, here it is:

Jamie Drew? Wow, where do I even begin?

He set up this whole enterprise, you know. A professional man in a very loose sense of the word. Maybe progressive is a better one. He acknowledges his deadlines in a very zen kind of way, in that his assignments are never handed in late. Nor do they appear early. They arrive, and that’s enough for him. Since Jamie’s arrival, stress in the workplace is at an all-time low.

During his time with me, who is himself, Jamie has proven that he can work in a large team of multi-disciplinary professionals, including his brain, his ass (which is genereally ordered to stay in the chair until these 500 words are done), his leathered fingertips, and whatever organ processes all that terrible coffee.

By which I mean, the coffee itself is terrible, not Jamie’s skill at making it. He prepares it excellently, with a lover’s eye for detail: Jamie tries to find the endearing qualities in the terrible coffee, even if its only endearing quality is that it was expensive, and the company (Jamie) can’t afford any more right now. This is exactly the kind of attitude he brings to the workplace. Treat him however you like; he knows he’s got no choice in the matter.

Subservience, that’s what you want from an employee, and Jamie Drew has it in spades. In summary, you should give him money at regular intervals over the next however long his attention span lasts.

Follow-up questions on the matter should be directed to my assistant, who is – in the interests of full disclosure – also me. He will make sure I get the message. I run a tight ship.