‘Just don’t expect me to wash my hair for it’.
We were talking on the phone, my sister and me. About my job interview the next morning, of which I wasn’t really sure if it even was a real interview.
I did need to wash my hair. It was getting slightly greasy. But these days I try to keep my hair washing to the bare minimum, with my red dye slowly but steadily fading away.
For any real job, I would have definitely washed my hair. But the woman had already almost given me the job over the phone. And it was not like they even asked for a CV. Even more so, you could not have finished high school and they wouldn’t even be interested in knowing this information. It just didn’t seem like a good waste of the already decreasing number of washings I had left.
We settled for dry shampoo. ‘At least try to put some effort in it.’
And so it was that the next day I biked to the office on my old rusty bike that misses a couple of spokes with an unwashed dress and greasy hair that smelled strongly like dry-shampoo. At least dry shampoo smells nice.
I applied for a side job to deliver mail. This particular job-attempt was the first one of my attempts that received a positive reaction. Getting a side job is my short-term master plan, because I like the idea of eating and having a home. This way I can buy myself some time to figure out what I want and potentially find a truly awesome job.
Anyway, I was received by a friendly woman who explained me everything. The company, the history, the way of working. She had a small flip-over on her desk with laminated papers that explained everything. She read each page out loud. She explained me how much I would earn in cents. Yes, not in euros, in cents. I wasn’t sure if I wanted to laugh uncontrollably about this scale and prospect of slavery or cry. I decided to just nod. She explained that the work wasn’t that difficult: ‘Basically, the only thing you need to be able to do is read’. Check, I think I have that one under control.
Then she came to the part where she explained the rules. I expected some part on privacy/confidentiality here, as mail is mostly private. There was a rule like this. But it wasn’t by any means the best rule. The best rule was this: ‘Do not leave any mail behind in nature or throw mail in waste containers.’ At this point I
was laughing uncontrollably. I simply couldn’t believe that this was part of the main explanation procedure. We are talking about your only job being to deliver mail, but instead ignoring that job and throwing everything in the bushes when nobody is watching because you feel like it. The woman stopped and said: ‘No seriously… people actually do this’.
Then she invited me to the yearly BBQ with fellow colleagues in June (who I will never see because this is kind of an individual job) to which I wasn’t really sure how to respond. I was still recovering from the rules. I think I was silent for just too long, because the lady carefully added ‘But if you don’t want to, you don’t have to’.
She explained more until she had explained everything there was to explain. She asked me if I wanted the job. I think she would have asked me that even if I had shown up in jogging pants and two more days of not washing my hair. I said yes.
A moment later, I was on my way back home, accompanied by the continuous noise that my vehicle produces only interrupted by the occasional skip of the chain, thinking to myself: ‘I just hope my bike will hold the weight of the mail-bags.’
Perhaps they should make a rule about that. And then laminate it. And read it out loud...
