Jean grabbed her purse and the bag where she
kept her laptop. She walked very fast but tried not to look angry, disappointed
or anything else. She just wanted to leave that place as fast as she could. It
was very uncomfortable to stay there after she had been so insulted. As she
arrived to the elevator, the door closed as someone was going down just before
her. She whispered a course word, frustrated that she had to wait like an idiot
in order to leave a please she definitely didn’t wanted to stay in or return
ever again. She felt too humiliated.
Out of nowhere, one of the guys that had been
there during her interview walked up to her. He told her that they had been
looking for her. A tiny shimmer of light appeared in her heart only to be
crushed moments later when she realized the man had come to find her because
she had left her pen in the table. What was even more annoying, was that he
started talking about the results of the interview and telling her, once again,
about all the flaws she had as a writer and so on. She wanted the Earth to
swallow her, as his voice was very loud and everyone around seemed to be
listening.
She had to close her eyes and just try to
relax by breathing slowly, feeling the air through her body. Ignoring the man
was not easy but she could at least think of something else as he talked and
talked and talked. The lady that managed the reception on that floor looked at
them with surprise and obvious disgust. When Jean opened her eyes, the lady
looked at her straight in the eye and shook her head, then looking at the guy.
Jean only smiled, thankful that at least one person realized in what an
uncomfortable situation she was.
Finally, the elevator opened up and she
stepped in without even acknowledging the man. For a moment, it seemed as
though he was going to follow her into the elevator but fortunately he didn’t.
He was even able to say anything else to Jean as she pressed hard the button
that made the elevator close faster. She then pressed the number for the ground
floor and started breathing normally again. She felt seriously awful and
couldn’t believe she had to go home now in a bus that would take at least
forty-five minutes. She didn’t felt good at all.
Luckily, the bus didn’t take long to pass and
she was able to find a free seat next to the window. She really wasn’t feeling
ok and even though she was going to fall asleep, her brain wouldn’t let her.
Not only because it may not be the best idea to fall asleep on a bus, but also
because she had their words in her head. She could hear them once and again,
trashing every single part of the work that she had done for them. Saying that
they destroyed her isn’t enough to describe what went on in that conference
room. A few tears rolled down her face.
She had to clean herself with her hand because
she had no tissues or anything like that. But it was clear to her that she had
no intention to be the crazy woman in the bus that cries “for no reason”. So
she tried to clean her tears off and attempted to think about something else. For
example, the fact that she had left her family cat by herself. It wasn’t
something that she did for the first time but it was something to think about.
The cat was obviously ok but she had to create a problem in her mind in order
to be able to resist the urge to cry.
The bus took less time to her stop than it
usually did. She hadn’t realized but she had left that office so early that
there wasn’t even the normal traffic jam of peak time out in the streets. When
she came down of the bus, she checked she had everything with her, including
the pen she had forgotten in her pocket. Walking home took only five minutes.
Her house had a cute garden that was brimming with light and color as she
entered. It was as if nature was trying to cheer her up.
And it did make her smile at least. When she
entered the house, she called for her parents. Fortunately, no one answered
back. They were normally there but she didn’t care where and why they had left,
she only wanted to go to her run and be able to fall asleep and nap for while,
all afternoon was possible. She dropped her purse and laptop bag on the ground
and took off her shoes before lying down in bed. She faced upwards, towards the
ceiling and, again, she could her all the criticism and the things all those
men had said.
She began to cry again but, this time, Jean
didn’t clean her face or attempted to appear tougher than she looked. She
didn’t need to do that, as that was her bedroom, her place in the world. There,
she could do whatever she wanted and in that moment she wanted feel miserable
for her. The words those men had said had been like daggers and they had
stabbed her with them once and again and again. It was almost as if they had
enjoyed themselves by doing so. To her, it was a very sick thing to do but she
only reflected on that many days later.
It had been really unnecessary to tell her all
those things. They didn’t have to sink every single fiber of her soul by saying
a lot of things that, even if part of the truth, weren’t as important in real
life as they might have portrayed them. They essentially told her she had no
idea how to write, that she couldn’t put three words together and that she made
no sense whatsoever in what she had written for them. It was an essay about
internal practices in very big companies.
Jean had no idea of that. She had not been to
business school or anything like it. She was just a normal girl trying to make
her way into the world. She had thought that her English level was good enough
for them but apparently it wasn’t. And of course it wasn’t because they had
told her that she didn’t need to correct her essay for them and she didn’t.
They lied to her because she would always do corrections but they had assured
her they weren’t necessary. Besides, she had no idea of any business practices.
She had a degree in creative writing, for God’s sakes!
They had also told her that her way of
portraying the business world was not very professional. And when she attempted
to explain that she had no experience in the actual business world, as she had
told the woman she had applied for the job too, they wouldn’t let her speak.
They would only raise her voice and just keep talking. The guy that gave back
her pen had been particularly nasty when saying that she shouldn’t have told
them that she was actually good in English. At that moment she felt so enraged,
she stood up and decided to leave.
After
all, three men in one small conference room were attacking her. And it was all
because of one miserable test they had set up in order to chose the perfect
person for the freelance job they were looking for. They weren’t even going to
take her into the company; they only wanted to see if she was available to do
some texts for them once in a while. And, later that week, Jean realized the
pay for one piece of writing was extremely mediocre compared to what people
with no big company attached to them could pay her.
It wasn’t the fact that they hadn’t hired her
but the fact that they had been deceitful in a way and that they had been so
rude in explaining to her why she hadn’t been selected. After all, it made no
sense that they had invited her to their offices only to insult her. It would
have been better to receive an email with two phrases: one thanking her for
applying and the other rejecting her application. It would be more direct and
less surrounded with bullshit. She realized those guys only wanted to feel
superior somehow and they had found their guinea pig in her.
Jean fell asleep as she was thinking all of
this. She woke up to the voice of her mom telling her it was dinnertime. When
her parents asked how it had all went down, she told her everything that had
happened and that she was planning to move along. It was hard for her to be her
age, living with her parents and she did wanted to earn some money for herself
but she wasn’t going to stop looking for a perfect fit to her talents. That
company wasn’t the only one in the world and she was certain that, sooner or
later, someone would be interested in what she could do.
