Journal #15: I had a difficult job interview today
I had a job interview today; it took me over five hours to recover afterward.
The interview was scheduled for 10:30AM, and I got out at 11:00AM. I sat outside in my car for thirty minutes, first talking to my dad on the phone, then my wife. The drive home took less than ten minutes and I got in at around 11:45AM. It's now a quarter to 6:00PM as I'm typing this, so I spent nearly six hours just faffing around between then and now.
I blasted Ugly by Screaming Females, one of my favorite albums ever, on my way home. On the drive to the interview I listened to pump myself up; during the drive back, I listened to drown out the pent up anxiety that had washed over me as soon as I walked away from the interview.
I applied to a bank for a teller position. I've been working in the fast food industry for my entire adult life, so it wasn't something I would've went for out of my own volition. The hiring manager had contacted me on Indeed after seeing my resume and asked that I apply. I thought about the tellers I knew at my own bank, and imagined it'd just be cashing checks and making small talk and that sort of stuff. The pay was good, too, so I thought why not go for something new?
The manager I interviewed with told me that this location had been struggling for a minute so the job would be more sales-focused, which wasn't what I was expecting. Halfway through the interview she handed me a pen and told me to sell it to her. What followed only lasted a couple seconds, but it felt like an eternity unfolding in slow motion: I looked down at the pen, registering what had been asked of me, knowing full well that I have absolutely zero experience in sales but a lifetime's experience struggling with social anxiety and poor communication skills—and now I'd been tasked to improvise a sales pitch.
As I took the pen in hand and looked back up at the bank manager, all of my instincts told me to run. If I could have hit pause and rewound to when I walked through the door, I would've picked myself up, turned myself around, and walked back to my car.
I couldn't do that. My only option was to fumble through an awkward pen persuasion. I ended up pulling stuff out of my ass that I hadn't thought of since speech class in high school, and finished with a meek laugh.
The rest of the interview progressed on more familiar ground. I spoke about my experience in food service and my customer interactions as a manager, etc. By that point my brain was in shutdown mode, and I was just speaking on automatic.
I've been so miserable at my current job I thought I'd take anything that fell into my lap. The more I sit with my thoughts, however, the more I realize that is not the case.
I walked out of the interview incredibly relieved that it was over. I could hardly sell a pen—the idea of trying to sell a checking account to people makes my skin crawl.
I guess that's the point of new experiences though. They're often uncomfortable, stressful, and don't end optimally. At the end of the day, though, I'm glad I did it. It helped me break the ice on job hunting and gave me a better perspective on what I want to find in a new job, as well as practice at interviews after years of working at the same place.
At the very least, I got some cool threads out of it, haha.
✘ Posted on — 03/28/25
✘ Last modified — 4 months, 3 weeks ago
✘ Link — https://blog.xavierhm.com/journal-15-i-had-a-difficult-job-interview-today