Issue 7, Winter/Spring 2009

Infectious Enthusiasm
by Matthea Marquart

Riding the New York City subway in the middle of the day along with the other non-office workers, I often see nervous young people in new suits, knuckles white from clutching their shiny, empty briefcases – college students or recent grads on their way to job interviews.  Eyes wide open, mumbling to themselves, they look mentally unstable and inspire pity, which in my experience is exactly the correct approach to getting your first job.

            I showed up to my first job interview unannounced, because my stepdad Chul and I had been walking along the streets of Seoul, Korea, when suddenly he spotted a sign for an English language institute, grabbed my arm, and manhandled me in.

            “Hello.  I don’t have an appointment,” I said to the receptionist, Chul’s firm grip on my bicep, “but I thought I’d stop by and see if you have any openings for English teachers.”

            It turned out that she didn’t speak English, so Chul stepped in, they spoke Korean excitedly for a few minutes, it seemed like he won some kind of dispute, and he turned to me and issued a command – “Wait.”  He stood guard next to me to make sure I didn’t leave.

            Two hours later, the American director got back from lunch and was startled to find me in the waiting room.  I don’t know what surprised him more – the idea that someone would randomly wander in for an interview; big, muscular Chul standing silently next to me, arms crossed, like a bodyguard; or my sterile, self-adhesive, white cotton eye patch.

            Summers in Korea have the hazard of a highly contagious eye infection that transmits itself via subway poles, door handles, and handshakes.  I got one every summer I was there visiting relatives, and this summer was no exception.  One eye was swollen shut – thus the eye patch, which was damp and discolored from whatever was coming out of my eye – and the other was fire engine red and starting to puff up – thus the thick backup glasses instead of contacts.  Since I never wear glasses, my only option was to put on the gigantic aluminum pair my friends had dared me to purchase at a thrift store in college.  The blessing in all of this was that I couldn’t see well enough to know what I actually looked like, and although I could vaguely see people’s heads turning as we walked by, I couldn’t see their expressions.

            Polite as can be, Chris stuck out his hand for a handshake, pretending I looked like a viable job candidate and not a crying pirate with a brawny sidekick.  I wasn’t sure about the etiquette for greeting people when touching them might make their eyes swell up and ooze, but I had read that a firm handshake is an absolute essential for starting a job interview on the right foot.  So, I gripped Chris’s hand firmly, and then he ushered me into his office, holding the door open for me.

            Sitting down, Chris carefully folded his hands in his lap rather than let them come into contact with anything on his desk.

            “Are you certified as an English language teacher?” he began.

            I had read that in job interviews, one should enthusiastically talk up barely related qualifications.  “I don’t have a certificate per se, but I do have a Bachelor’s degree in the early British novel,” I replied earnestly.  “Also, I speak English very well.  I don’t use slang, you see.”  I paused and racked my brains for something else.  “Oh, and I lived in England for a year, so I can do an authentic English accent!”  This was true – my British friends had told me that I sounded exactly like an authentic English granny with a stick up her bum.

            Chris tried to think of something nice to say.  “Yes, accents can be good for listening exercises,” he said.  “But tell me, do you have any experience teaching English?  Or teaching anything else?”

            Back to puffing up barely-related experience.  “Sometimes in college I proofread my friends’ papers, and I was very good at it.  I always caught typos, and so many people wanted me to proof their papers that I didn’t always have time,” I replied, proud that my first real job interview ever was going so well.  I was really good at sounding enthusiastic!  I felt the same enthusiastic high I felt as a teenager in the 1980s, when I would put on my rhinestone-studded, acid-washed denim Hammer pants, a fluorescent yellow button-up shirt with the collar flipped up, and a dark blue jacket with extra large shoulder pads and fringe at the top of the sleeves, and walk to school, proud of my ability to put together a totally radical outfit. 

In retrospect, it was as if I were interviewing to be a firefighter and saying, “Yes indeed, I certainly do have a lot of experience – at home I have a gas stove, so I see open flames all the time.”  Or as if I were running for President and saying, “Sure, it may look like I ditched things like military service, jury duty, and businesses that I personally ruined, but come on, my dad used to do this and I have the same last name, so of course I can do this, too.”

            “Um, proofreading experience can come in handy for grading papers,” Chris said, as if he were up for some kind of etiquette award.  “But tell me, what do you know about our institute?  Why do you want to work here?” 

            The honest answer would have been that I had no idea of who they were – they could have been a right-wing Christian missionary school or an undercover cell for the CIA for all I knew.  I was at the institute because my stepdad was letting me live with him even though he and my Mom were separated, and he had woken me up that morning to make me apply for a job at another institute down the street, but on the way there we saw the sign for this place.  There had been no way to argue because Chul doesn’t speak English and I don’t speak Korean, and plus the eye medication had sucked up any energy I might have had to emphatically point out the value of things like preparation, appointments, or waiting until I wasn’t sick as a dog, so I figured I’d just get the humiliation over with so I could go back home to bed. 

            Even without the language barrier, there wouldn’t have been any point in arguing, because Chul’s an expert at using his cute gruffness to win.  When he and I went to restaurants together, I didn’t even get to look at the menus – he was always so charmingly eager for me to try the specialty of this or that restaurant that he ordered the instant we sat down.  If I was in the mood for some other food of my own choosing, he looked so disappointed that I always gave in. 

            Over lunch, our conversations sounded like we were extremely polite cavepeople. 

            “This good?” Chul would ask, using two of his dozen English words.

            “Yes, good,” I’d reply, using two of my dozen Korean words.

            “That good?” Chul would ask, pointing at something else.

            “Yes, good,” I’d reply.

            “Drink?” Chul would ask.

            “Yes, thank you,” I’d reply.  “Good.”

            “You good?” Chul would ask, as we moved past talking about our meal and onto finding out about each other’s week.

            “Yes, good.  Thank you,” I’d reply.  This would have been my reply whether I had spent the week in jail or I had learned the secret to interstellar travel and spent the week hopping from planet to planet.  In fact, one week our apartment was broken into, and we didn’t have the vocabulary to discuss it, so I just said, “Yes, good. Thank you” when Chul asked about my week, and he said the same thing.  For ages I assumed that all that the burglars had stolen was my bag of gummy bears, and good-hearted Chul assumed that I had borrowed the $500 cash he’d left on the counter and I was going to return it at any moment.  Eventually, I told the amusing Gummy Bear Robbery story to my Mom on the phone, and since Chul had mentioned my borrowing $500 to her, she connected the dots, called Chul, and straightened us out. 

“You good?” I’d ask Chul in return.

            “Yes, good.  Thank you,” he’d reply.  When that ritual ended, we’d eat in silence until our plates were clean and it was time to start again with the “good”s and the “thank you”s. 

            The only time I didn’t end up eating whatever he’d commanded me to eat was the time he caught me digging around the kitchen for some lunch and ordered me to make a sandwich.  “No,” I said, pointing out the green mold all over the stale old loaf of bread. 

            Outraged, he took out a slice and waved it in my face.  “Good!  Good!” he said.

            “No!” I insisted, and so he stared right at me and without ever breaking eye contact, ate the entire slice slowly and with relish. 

“Good.  Good.”

            Since Chul was so likeable, when he insisted that I try to get a job at this institute that I’d never heard of, I didn’t put up much of a fight.

“This institute has a great reputation,” I said to Chris, wiping my runny red eye, “which I can tell is well deserved because I saw a lot of students walk by during the two hours I waited to talk with you, and they all looked really happy.”

            I can only guess that I was hired due to a combination of guilt for making me wait so long, my firm handshake, and the type of curiosity to see what would happen when I tried to teach that makes people watch bug-eating contests on tv.  It certainly wasn’t sex appeal.

            So when I see interviewees looking nervous on the subway, I want to offer them a little friendly reassurance.  But really, what could possibly sound reassuring coming from a stranger who’s been staring at them and giggling for the last 15 minutes?  I just have to content myself with the knowledge that if looking crazy is the key to getting a job, every sweaty stress case I see on the subway is good.