The Interview and The Lift
Archive - Originally posted on "The Horse's Mouth" - 2009-02-12 01:20:12 - Graham EllisThe Interview was for a pressure position - European Software Support Specialist for an American product - working for the American manufacturer and based at their single European office in Basingstoke, from where they co-ordinate their distribution and dealership network through Europe. It went well enough; my technical background wasn't completely unknown to the team already working there, and they had a product range in which I could have faith, and thus enthusiasm. But could I stand the pressure?
Leaving the interview on the top floor, the MD shook my hand and I stepped into the lift. The doors closed. And the lift moved about 3 inches down, and juddered to a halt. Buttons pressed, and nothing; something had failed. That big button with the red bell that's in most lifts - the one that should be labelled - "OY - I AM STUCK IN HERE" pressed, and bells rang around.
Picture, if you can, the doors prised open by a few inches, and my interviewer offering to feed me sandwiches through the crack. A very strange way to conclude an interview (and I was assured wholly unintentional), but I think it must have answered that pressure question as I was offered - and accepted - the job, rising quite quickly to becoming the European Technical Support Manager with an "if it's Monday it must be Brussels" type job. And a lot of other good stories.
I'll have to tell, some time, of pulling circuit boards out of a system to reseat the chips at 3 a.m. on an exhibition stand in Munich. Of a rapid drive across Paris to catch a plane after a tense meeting, with the taxi driver on his mobile phone telling his wife he couldn't argue with her as he had been instructed to listen to his English passengers are report back to our distributor (he really should have spoke French to one of us to see if we knew). Of a training course given in a 3D graphics programming library in the remote Swedish town of Arborga, where my married male colleague had to resist the advances of a local pretty boy who took a fancy to him at the monthly disco at the only hotel in town where we were staying.