I was hoping the big question would be “When can you start?” but it turned out to be a non sequitur, one that didn’t seem to have anything to do with whether or not I was more qualified than the other candidate.
It happened back in January 1985. I’d been out of Wabash College for two and a half years, bouncing around like an unemployed English major, chasing false leads, trying to figure out my place in the universe. As regular readers of this newsletter know, I spent the first year out of college printing t-shirts and waiting on customers at the same part-time job I had during college. I did some substitute teaching at my old high school and despite my experience there thought maybe I should go back and take the classes I needed to get a teaching degree. I enrolled at Purdue, spent about five minutes in the education program, and switched to trying to get a Master’s in English. At the end of the summer semester I was out of money and no longer interested in getting a Master’s, so I moved home and helped with the housework and got hooked on a soap opera called Guiding Light. In the summer of 1984 I led a crack team of young detasselers through the cornfields of southern Tippecanoe County. You might have seen the serialized memoir of that summer around here somewhere.
Now, you don’t really need an English degree to manage corn detasselers, although I admit it came in handy when I had to stop two high schoolers from coming to blows over which Bronte sister kicked more ass.
In the fall of 1984 Robin Pebworth at Wabash College offered me a one-off brochure-writing gig for the career services department. In December the Indianapolis Star’s Sunday supplement published a humorous essay I’d submitted and forgotten about. Suddenly I had professional writing samples—two of them! I made a couple hundred thousand copies of each and then sat there wondering how these might help me make a living.
Every Sunday I scanned the Star classifieds and one day near the end of the year I found an Indianapolis publisher looking for a copywriter for its marketing department. I fired off my samples and a resume with lots of white space on it, and I was amazed to get an interview within the week.
I began to imagine renting an apartment in Indianapolis. Buying a car. Not detasseling.
I drove to Indy and met a guy named Jack in the marketing department. He was impressed with my education and had seen my essay in the Star, and he put me right at ease by confiding that of the four candidates chosen for interviews, he thought I was the best writer.
It’s good to be the best writer, I thought, particularly when there’s a writing job at stake.
Rather than hiring me on the spot, though, Jack wanted me and the other candidate to work up a sample ad—a little take-home test to see how we worked under a deadline.
I’m on it, I said to what I assumed would be my future boss.
I didn’t save a copy of my sample ad but I do remember that Jack didn’t care for it. The good news was that he didn’t care for any of the others either, so I made the first cut. Now instead of being the best writer out of four, I was the better writer out of two.
All that stood between me and my first career job was the other candidate, one more interview, and, though I didn’t know it at the time, the big question.
The second interview was held over lunch at a Chinese restaurant in Indianapolis. A woman named Deb accompanied Jack because she was also going to have some say in who filled the position. That was fine with me. I found both Jack and Deb quite likable and I felt quite at ease with both of them. We were enjoying the meal and laughing and getting along quite nicely, and then shortly before the check arrived Deb paused and said “Well, here’s the big question—”
I braced for it. I was ready to say tomorrow. Or if not tomorrow Monday. Actually, hell, I’ll start this afternoon.
But the big question wasn’t “When can you start?” It was “Do you drink?”
Interesting question, I thought. Wabash’s reputation for beer consumption was right up there with its reputation for academic excellence—was it possible they were trying to avoid employing someone who still partied like Bluto Blutarsky? The truth was that at the time I’d never touched alcohol in my life. My big answer was “No, I don’t.”
Deb’s smile faded. “Not at all?”
“Not at all.”
“Hmmm,” she mused, then she hmmmed again. The more she hmmmed, the more I realized I had given the wrong answer to the big question.
And I’ve always hoped that the person Jack and Deb hired was a really great drinker.
Because I know he or she was the second-best writer.