Note to Self: Must Go Bear Hunting

This morning I went to an interview at L. L. Bean to be a "seasonal employee" at their Freeport store, just three miles from my home. I thought it would be a hoot and give me an up-close view of normal people, something I am not but hope to be someday. And even though I have been hired in the past by The Ronald McDonald House, The Washington Post, The Washington Star, The Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, U.S. News & World Report, Time-Life Books, The Washington Times, The Oakland Tribune, The Deseret News, the Democratic National Committee, the U. S. Chamber of Commerce, The Corcoran School of Art, the Salt Lake City Public Schools, and various bookstores and department stores and garden shops and summer camps, I was not deemed worthy to sell clothing and tote bags and chocolate-covered maple candies and cookies in the shape of boots and moose to tourists in search of a take-home trinket or two.

The interview process was run like a game show. There were eight contestants, and we were all competing against one another. We each had to answer the same questions, which was easy if you were the first but harder if you came last since there was basically only one answer to the question, and seven people had already said it by the time it got me. Then you had to sell something to the group--I got a pair of socks--and also work as a team member to solve a problem. I'm pretty sure I passed all that with flying colors. Where I fell down was in describing my outdoor expertise, especially since one lady had just returned from a weekend of bear hunting with her husband and another guy spent a week ocean kayaking with his bird-watching wife, and a young woman was in Greece picking olives on organic farms for three months, and suddenly my oil paintings and vegetable garden did not seem very impressive. And then they asked us to describe a time in the past when we had worked on a computer and had to also answer phones and deal with customers at the same time, and I had nothing. Nada. Never. And I guess now I never will, since they said they "would not be offering me a position in their retail store," but suggested I apply to work in their corporate offices. Feh--been there, done that, not doing that.

So once again I failed as one of the masses, something I desperately want to experience. Maybe in my next life.