Wednesday, January 06, 2010

So I had an interview today for a J-O-B. It's just for a position as an office-type-person at the local Humane Society and even if I don't get it, I'll consider the interview a success because I got to play with the cutest litter of beagle-bulldog puppies.

Still, for my first interview in... over a year, I think it went okay. Plus, it's always fun to dress up in binding grown-up clothes and worry about getting wrinkles... oh, wait, that part sucks.

The interview process brings me to the last interview I went on and OMG HOW THE HELL DID I NEVER BLOG ABOUT THIS??????

Anyway - back in Texas, I was perusing the local Craigslist (in the employment section, thankyouverymuch, perverts) and found an ad for some guy looking for someone to help him cook and clean and run errands.

Shit, I thought. I do that at home for free!

So I email the guy and he emails me back the next day and says he wants to set up an interview. I call him to set up the interview and find out that he's a cop and he's recently divorced and not handling it so well because he counted on his wife to do all the household stuff for him. He just wants some help getting back on his feet. I'm always a sucker for a sad story, so I agree to meet him at some Mexican restaurant that afternoon.

We meet and I get this immediate vibe that he's kind of squirrelly, not that he had a bushy tail or that he looked super cute standing on his back legs eating a cracker, but that he was sort of... anxious.

Whatever, I thought. Maybe he's just uncomfortable around people.

So we grab a table, get some iced teas and he spills this whole sad story about his divorce and how he had to move out of his house and how he really can't function without someone to cook for him, clean for him, do his laundry, drop off the prescriptions for his OCD medication, and put up curtains in the condo he's renting.

I start to think he's kind of got that pathetic underdog thing going that brings out the mother hen in me. I can just imagine that this guy (who is about my age) has been married to his high school sweetheart for as long as he can remember and just doesn't know how to cope without her. So I ask how long he was married.

"We were together for almost two years and married for a little over a year."

D00d, you're in your mid-thirties, were you in assisted living prior to being married?

The more we talk, the more it seems like he's trying to hire a girlfriend, not an assistant. He talks about me cooking him dinner and us watching tv together. I start to get this feeling that this story is going to end with "and she was never seen again".

I shrug off the feeling, thinking I've just had too much caffeine, or that I'm just nervous at being on my first interview in forever.

The interview ends with the dude telling me he's meeting another woman later that evening, but unless she tells him that she likes to clean the house "topless in four inch heels", I've pretty much got the job.

Wow, no red flags there, right?

Predictably, he texts me that night and asks me if I want the job.

By now, that icky feeling in the pit of my stomach is pretty much overwhelming. It's one of those gut feelings that, if I ignore it, is guaranteed to come back and bite me in the ass. Or be quoted in one of those real-life CSI style shows after they find my skin stretched out on his living room wall.

So I tell him that I don't think I'm going to be able to take the job. He replies that it's cool and says that he still wants to hang out and be friends because "we have so much in common". LIKE WHAT? Other than the yin-yang of you being a serial killer and me being a living breathing person.

I know I need to tread lightly because he's a cop and has already Google-mapped my house and he seems a bit unhinged.

Then the next day, the husband mentions that when he was leaving for work at 6AM (or some other ungodly hour), there was a big tan truck parked outside of our house that peeled away when he pulled his car out.

Three guesses what kind of vehicle the prospective employer drove.

So I did what any reasonable person would do - emailed him that the husband got transferred and that we were moving out of state (fortunately - on about thirty seven levels - the next month the husband got the job offer that brought us here).

But, seriously, how the hell did I not blog that before? Oh, right, because the guy was/is a cop and had already googled me and I didn't want him finding the blog where I make light of him being a homicidal maniac.