Acing the Interview

This is a work of fiction. No real people, places or events were used. Copyright 2011 Plot Roach.

Acing the Interview

By Plot Roach

It was a gloomy Monday morning when jack, one of our traveling writers, glided into my office as if on golden wings, depositing a small paper wrapped package on my desk. “Have you talked with Sullivan about my advance yet?’ he asked, a hopeful grin on his impossibly boyish face.

“Mr. Sullivan won’t be back in the office for the next week, but I’ll see what I can wrangle out of Payroll.” I said, never looking up from the glowing mass of data crawling across my computer screen.

“I brought you a gift.” he said, teasingly holding the box up just in my line of vision.

“Yes, I see.”

“Aren’t you wondering what it is?”

“No. I’ll get to it later. right now I’m working through the employee lists, determining who gets a raise and who-”

“Gets the ax” he said.

“Precisely.” I said, though the notes marching across my screen did little to tell me about the people I stood in judgment over. I knew from past experience that those promoted within our little publishing company often did little to deserve it, taking credit for the work of others. The man who stood before me, Jason Leemark, often regaled others at social gatherings with stories about his travels -stories that often came from the autobiographies of other writers. But he was a charming man, and the son of one of the business owners. So everyone looked the other way when he shoveled his exotic manure at dinner parties, weddings and other public events. I wished that there was some way to look into the heart of each employee, and be able to judge them for what they did -not what they took credit for.

“Come on, Jessie.” he teased. “Take a break from the coal mines and open my little gift.”

As if he knew what working in the coal mines was like, I thought. He’d been babied since birth and was likely going to inherit his father’s share of the company. And was even more likely going to drive it into the ground, while blaming the other partner. I sighed, rolled my eyes and decided to humor him. I took the package, cut the cotton string with my letter opener and ripped the paper off of the box. Inside, nestled among shredded bits of an Egyptian newspaper, was a statue of an Egyptian scribe.

“It’s from Egypt.”

“Really?” I asked, trying to keep the sarcasm from my voice.

“I picked it up on my way through ….” his voice droned on about some adventure he allegedly had in Cairo. I smirked while half listening to it, I had already read a similar story five years ago in a travel journal. But I let him keep his illusions as I studied the statue further. The scribe appeared to be carved from obsidian. Instinctively I looked to the bottom of the piece, it may have well been made in Egypt, for it did not have a sticker saying that it was made in China or Mexico. I once had a coworker bring me a mug from her vacation in Hawaii, though the sticker on the bottom declared its origin to be from the Philippines. The scribe smiled up into the air, clutching a roll of papyrus in one hand and a quill in the other. I had seen a number of statues, especially while leafing through some of the books we published, and never recalled one where the subject was happy. They all appeared much too serious or noble to crack a smile under the artist’s observing eye. That, or maybe the artists in question had been threatened by their subjects. Either way, the scribe’s smile made me smile as I sat in on my desk. “And that was how I came into possession of the little guy.”

“Wow.” I said. “What an interesting story”

He saw Janice, a new hire working in Accounting, walk past and quickly excused himself in pursuit of her. Doubtless he had another “gift” to bestow upon her with the same lame story he had given to me. I lifted the scribe and turned it over in my hands, wondering just how many of the things he had bought in some overpriced gift shop on the way home. The little quill fell out of the scribe’s hand and I wasn’t surprised. It was probably made in a foreign country by a four year old in slave labor.

I set it down on my desk and turned away to pick the quill off the ground. When I turned to my desk again, I was face to face with the largest insect I have ever seen. My first thought was that I had read too much Kafka recently. And my second, was that this had to be some sort of joke by Jason. Catch me off guard and slip in some guy in a bug suit.

“Okay, what’s the deal?” I asked. “Who set you up to this?”

“Many thanks unto you, dear lady, for my release.” Said a voice that emanated from the bug, though I could see no visible lip -or mandible- movement.

“Uh-huh, cut the crap. What do you want from me?”

“Only to serve you, mistress. As you have freed me from my prison of many thousands of years.”

“So what? You’re like some genie?”

“Nothing so crass as that.” the bug man said. “I am much better, I am a god.”

“Really?” I asked. “The god of what?”

“I am a minor god, possessing various talents-”

“What’s you name?”

“You could not produce it with your American tongue.”

“Uh-huh.” I said. “Next time tell Jason he’s got to get a better story to get a rise out of me, bug man. Now if you’ll leave my office I can get some work done.”

“’Bug man'?’”

“Well, you are dressed like a big bug.”

“Let me remedy that.” he said. And then in the blink of an eye became a man. No smoke, no flash, no poof of ‘stage magic’. One moment he was a big beetle looking thing and the next he was a dark skinned male with large, dark, almond-shaped eyes. He wore a type of kilt and nothing else. And while he was sitting cross legged on my desk I could see, well… everything.

“Um. Can you put on something a little more befitting this time period?” I asked, averting my eyes.

“Does my appearance still offend you?”

“No, it’s just that men don’t usually flash women their privates when they first meet them. Well… At least the ones “normal” ones don’t.”

Shadows flowed like liquid over his body and formed a suit similar to the one Jason wore. I was suddenly very jealous of his powers if only for the fact that I could never get a good pantsuit to fit me right off the rack at the department store. “Better?” he asked.

“Much, thank you.”

“As for the next task you would have of me-”

“Whoa buddy, what exactly are you? I know that you said that you’re a god and all. But please give me some background, okay?” My Human Resources streak was finally kicking in. Only this time instead of interviewing a pimply faced geek looking for part time work in the mailroom, I was interviewing a god.

“I was a minor god in what your people now call Egypt. I was a liaison between the guild of scribes and the gods of knowledge. It was my job to make certain that the gifts placed into human hands were not being squandered needlessly.”

“And how did you do this?” I asked, leaning back into my chair and crossing my legs.

“When a scribe presents his work before the pharaoh, he also presents it before the gods for judgment. If he does this with a lying heart, I can sense it and take immediate action, to mete out the proper punishment.”

“You could tell when a scribe was taking someone else’s credit?”

“Yes.”

“And what did you do?”

“I could damage the work, causing the scribe to lose face in front of the nobles, his peers and the gods. I could also call forth pests to ruin his supplies so that it would cost him more to replace them than it would the money he received for his lies. I could also wound the man with his own scroll.”

“Wait -what? How could you hurt him with papyrus?”

“A small cut is all that is needed for an infection to spread throughout the body.”

“You killed people with paper cuts?”

“Yes. And for this I was betrayed and held hostage.”

“How?”

“One night, Pharaoh’s scribes held a banquet in my honor. I became inebriated and quickly fell asleep and then…”

“They put you into that statute?”

“Yes. And since you have released me, I now serve you.”

“What about the Egyptian gods? Won’t they need you back?”

“They are sleeping now. Waiting for more followers or the end of time, whichever comes first. Since then, a lot of divine positions have been… downsized.”

“And you’d like to seek employment as my ‘divine assistant’?”

“If you will have me.”

“Can you do the same for me here that you did back in Egypt? I don’t want death or dismemberment or anything like that. But I do want to know who is doing the work and who is trying to take credit for it.”

“You wish to use my skills of judgment? To this I can agree, but how may I show you who is the humble worker and who is the greedy jackal?”

“Oh, I’m sure you’ll find a way -as long as it’s non-lethal.”

And from that day on, my work became little easier when the time came for employee reviews. Those to be chastised or earmarked for termination were easy to be found, as there was a new rash of toner leaks, paper cuts and broken pens to mark them.