Internships, as you may or may not know, don't normally pay, and living in New York City, as you also may or may not know, is incredibly expensive. So by my second week in the city I knew I was going to have to get an actual job to go along with my internship.
The good thing about my job search in New York was that every single store I entered was hiring; the bad thing was that I was among who knows how many applicants. I decided, of course, to indulge my love of clothing and try to get a job at one of my favorite stores.
You can imagine my shock when I learned that one of these stores (whose identity we will protect by calling Bo's Clothing Shack) was having an open call.
Expecting to show up and be among about ten other applicants I grabbed my resume and headed over to find a line of about 100 people. Guess I should have showed up a little early, but how was I to know that getting a job at Bo's Clothing Shack was like getting front row tickets to see Miley Cyrus (not that I have tried).
After I went inside and got my number, 110, I stood in a line for about two hours. Seventy more people joined the line after me and I became fairly positive that my chances of getting a job were about 179 fashionable New Yorkers to one small Ohioan. Finally, after I had compared my outfit to about 50 others, and came up the loser in my mind, I was ushered inside to meet with a woman.
She asked me the normal questions, and I gave my honest answers. This seemed to pay off as she spoke with me longer than she did with the people before me in the line and then she asked if she could take my picture. As we parted I couldn't believe how confident I felt about getting this job. Five steps later, I was a little less sure, and by the time I got on the train I was convinced she had only taken my picture so that she could bar me from every Bo's Clothing Shack in the country.
For two long days I worried about my chances of getting a job. I applied at other places and even had another interview, but on day three I got a call. They wanted to have me for a second interview! Determined to look my most stylish I threw on my best Bo's Clothing Shack outfit and headed off to meet with my destiny.
I was a lone Bobcat, ready to take on the New York chain of my favorite clothing store. A lone Bobcat who they didn't seem to even know was coming when I arrived. A lone Bobcat who sat on a bench for an entire hour waiting for someone to come talk to her. A lone Bobcat who began to wonder if she had made up the phone call for the second interview in her mind. A lone Bobcat who was incredibly relieved when ,finally, a man walked out of the office, looked down at her and said, Oh
we are going to go ahead and hire you.
He handed me paperwork, introduced himself and then left me to wonder what the heck just happened. Perhaps he thought he had already interviewed me, perhaps I was so impressive the first time that he didn't need to talk to me again, or perhaps he didn't feel like wasting time on a girl who wouldn't be staying longer than a summer anyway. Whatever the reason, he hadn't even looked at my perfectly arranged outfit. Too bad, because I was looking F-L-Y.
Jane Adams is a junior studying journalism. You can try to guess the store where she got a job at ja250406@ohiou.edu, although she won't tell you. 4
Opinion
Jane Adams
