For my first job I applied to be selected as a top management trainee with a very successful corporation. Every year they selected their high fliers of the future. The selection process was notoriously rigorous, several thousand applicants being whittled down to only a handful of lucky ones.
My written application was successful. I had been admitted to the interview process, no mean feat in itself.
Over the following weeks we went to Head Office for a whole battery of written tests, each one designed to gauge one aptitude or another. I'm glad to say that I managed to hang in there, if only just!
And I was still there when it came to the face to face interviews.
I cannot even remember half the faces on the many interview panelists who grilled us, made us feel as uncomfortable as possible, yes, tormented us in every which way to assess our characters under just about every kind of pressure. After several hundreds of candidates had been rejected, our numbers were reduced to only a few dozen. Again I marveled at how I had survived.
Rumour had it that this was it. Only one final ordeal lay before us, the likes of which was the stuff of nightmares.........
The big day arrived. By that evening we remaining few bone weary and trembling wrecks, just about wiped out in every which way, would either be able to make it home with a soft song in our hearts, or......no, none of us wanted to even go there! To be rejected at this final hurdle was just too awful to contemplate.
So what about this final day of the selection process?
All we knew was that about 24 of us remained, and that there would be another series of interviews; this time with the very top executives of the corporation, the ones with the pool table sized desks and tennis court sized carpets that tickled your ankles.
My turn came. I was led into the office of Mr Peters by the drill sergeant, as we had come to call him, because this man had a voice like a foghorn and eyes like lasers. The drill sergeant had been our guide through the selection process from day one.
Mr Peters was a tiny man and he sat on a raised dais behind his desk. This enabled him to look down, in a godly way, upon anyone who sat opposite him. Surprisingly he talked about his family. His wife's fondness for Gucci handbags. The Maserati his son owned. Their skiing holidays in Gstaad. Now and then Mr Peters would throw in a quick, piercing glance in my direction. But I think I did all right.
And then he abruptly got to his feet to indicate that the interview was over. The drill sergeant appeared as if on cue. I wondered if he had been spying on us from another room.
Just as the drill sergeant was ushering me out, I noticed something odd; Mr Peters was turning away and I saw that he was wearing his light cashmere V-neck sweater back to front. Oh, well!
The next guy, Mr Heckman, was someone high up in the finance department. I was on full alert. I sometimes came unstuck with numbers. But again he didn't talk about work at all. From his desk drawer he took out a big fat register-like book. Inside the pages he had pressed and dried flowers from all around the world. He'd gathered them from the exotic places where he'd been a holiday, he told me. He wanted me to name them and looked disappointed when I couldn't even manage one. Again, the drill sergeant must have been watching, for Mr Heckman only had to raise his voice a little for him to reappear.
Mr Heckman came half way around his desk to shake my hand. I noticed he was wearing a pale shade of pink nail varnish. Or was it only a trick of the light? By then I had enough on my mind, regretting the fact that I hadn't taken a degree in botany. No doubt Mr Heckman had already crossed me off the list, thanks to my woeful knowledge of plants!
The drill sergeant took me to the next floor in a silent elevator, all polished brass and mirrors.
Mr Gaffney was the third and last top man to interview me---even if these meetings were beginning to seem more like social chit-chat sessions.
Now this was really embarrassing, because Mr Gaffney seemed perfectly normal in every way, except that he reeked of booze. From under his chair he took out an old biscuit tin containing hundreds of little toy soldiers. For the next hour he insisted that I helped to arrange them, by regiment, along his long windowsill overlooking the ant-like traffic far down below. Okay. Either the guy was on the skids or he was some kind of financial genius whom they had to keep at any cost. He laughed a lot, and it was all I could do not to gag at the raw liquor fumes. However, his hands as he arranged the soldiers were amazingly steady, which was something that I just couldn't understand.
Once again in came the drill sergeant to usher me out. He didn't seem to notice anything wrong.
I was led to a tiny room with a single chair and no windows and told to wait. So I waited. I needed the toilet, but I held on. I was thirsty. One hour passed. Two. And three. Now I wasn't just bursting for the loo. I wasn't just thirsty. I was hungry too.
I tried the door. It was locked. I began to lose my cool. Just then a key turned and in came the drill sergeant. Seeing me standing, he sat down on the only chair in the room. My chair!
"Well, John. That's it. It's over. Finished. Before I tell you if you have been selected, do you have any questions?"
I needed to get this over. I was dying on my feet. All I could think about was whether I had been selected. For that moment in time, nothing else mattered.
"No," I replied. "It's fine. No questions."
I waited. The drill sergeant's bushy eyebrows went up a fraction.
"None at all?"
"No."
I was trying my best not to let him see my acute physical discomfort, and it was all I could to stop myself from reaching forward and throttling him in an attempt to get the answer I so desperately needed. After all I'd been through, how could he be so insensitive!
The drill sergeant pursed his thick lips and leaned back.
"Okay, I'm sorry to tell you that you have not been selected, John." He got to his feet. "Well, it happens. Only a very few make it, so this is no reflection on you." He showed his teeth in an unpleasant, wolfish smile. By now my mind had gone blank with shock. Time slowed down so much that when I finally got my mouth open, all that emerged was a croak. For a moment the drill sergeant looked uncertain. Then he recovered, and placed one meaty arm across my shoulders.
"So sorry. Come now, old chap. I'll just show you out........"
I think that's what did it. If he had just turned around and walked out, then that would have been that. However, this last bit of patronizing hogwash with the close physical contact was more than I could bear. Something snapped inside me. A burst of adrenaline flooded my brain. I shook his arm off and rounded on him
"I can manage, thanks," I rasped. "Actually I don't want your crummy job anyway. Your top bosses stink. The last one, Mr Gaffney, of booze. And your Mr Heckman would be better off running a museum, and he should stop using his wife's nail varnish if he wants to be taken seriously. And as for back-to-front Mr Peters, I doubt he even knows which side of his bed he got out of this morning. What have those morons got on you guys that you continue to employ them? You're all nuts. I'm out of here."
I turned away.
"John, wait!" Quick as a snake the drill sergeant had leapt between me and the door. "Calm down. It's all right. You passed the test. Welcome to our graduate management training program." I blinked, I was sure I'd fallen asleep from exhaustion and was now dreaming. "It was a setup. Mr Peters, Mr Heckman, and Mr Gaffney---they are all actors. It was the last test. We need people who have the courage to speak out if something isn't right. Who are not overawed by their surroundings, their big pay-checks, the glamour of the corporation they are working for. More than half of you candidates remained cowed down and accepted the three men as perfectly legit. Top players who were above the laws meant for everyone else---they saw nothing wrong in top executives behaving badly, or at least very eccentrically. We don't want people like that. People who keep quiet, no matter what. We need lions, not lambs. And you just proved which one you really are!"
I didn't speak. I was too stunned. For a moment I stared at him, glassy-eyed. Then I said, "thanks. I accept. Now, if you'll excuse me......."
I only just made it to the loo in time!
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