Tuesday, September 30, 2008

"Forget it, Homer. It's Chiro-town."

This is a true story of an interview I went on in June, which, in retrospect, was awful to the point of hilarity.

I found an ad on Craigslist-- and so many trainwreck stories start that way-- for an assistant position in a chiropractor's office. No experience needed? I am so there. I sent them my resume, they replied with an invitation to come into the office for an interview. I had something going on that day; sweating bullets, I responded with a very polite and professional email apologizing, saying I have a previous obligation, could I reschedule? The response I got was the same email as before, with the interview date changed to a week later.

(At this point, what I should have done was deleted it and forgotten the whole thing; as you might have figured out by now, for a smart girl I can be phenomenally stupid sometimes.)

I drove out to the office (about half an hour from my apartment). There was a small group of people in professional dress standing by the door-- oh fantastic, a group interview. As I parked my car (this was in a busy supermarket mall), I noticed a few other professionally dressed people getting out of their cars and heading in the same direction I was. Okay, a big group interview. As we stood outside the office waiting for the door to open, even more people came and stood with us. I've never been good at determining the number of people in a group, but there were at least 50 applicants.

Now, I know that chiropractic is controversial. My dad had shoulder surgery, and a combination of chiropractic and physical therapy helped him to regain movement and heal. I think that seeing a chiropractor can be a legitimate route to take in certain medical situations.

This guy was the very soul of quackery.

As I stood on line, waiting to get an application and pen, I picked up a homemade book in his waiting room. It decried the evils of surgery, complete with graphic photos of, well, surgery. It's gross! People die on the operating table sometimes! (Your friendly neighborhood chiropractor doesn't get a slice of the pie!) I'll have to remember to get my spine aligned if my gosh-darn appendix ever becomes inflamed.

There wasn't anywhere in the waiting room to sit, so I ventured deeper into the office. It was an open room filled with obviously home-made exercise machines, wooden monstrosities with pullies and slings. Other people were sitting awkwardly on them, working on their own applications. A patient was still using one of the machines, doing his stretches and exercises in the midst of dozens of people storming the office and perching all around him. I crouched in the children's section-- yes, he practiced on children too-- and filled out my application. I grabbed a binder to lean on. In it were photos of the chiropractor aligning a newborn baby still in the hospital. You know, get 'em while the bones are still soft.

While I crouched in the play area in the midst of the teeming mass of hopefuls, a local radio station had been playing. This cut out, and a song started playing.

A song with amateurish production values.
A song with an irritating melody that still gets stuck in my head sometimes.
A song about chiropractic.

Then the song ended, and the silence that followed... oh wait no, it was being looped.

So finally, after hearing the Song what seemed like a dozen times more, the chiropractor comes out. He was wearing a polo shirt that looked like the one my gym teacher wore when I was in elementary school (in the early 90s). It was embroidered with the slogan that had been repeated ad nauseum in the chorus of the Song. Because of this little detail, I like to think that he wrote and recorded it himself, because that makes the story even more deliciously ridiculous. I'll never know for certain.

He introduced himself and set about explaining the job, which was less assisting in the office and more standing around in local shopping centers offering free consultations to the general public. Now, I'll tolerate some things that I'm not entirely comfortable doing in the name of a steady paycheck, but this involved (a) being That Girl at a mall kiosk, (b) working for a quack, and (c) potentially hurting children. Plus, from a purely pragmatic view, between the previous week and this session, he was interviewing over 100 people for what couldn't have been more than 4 openings, and I had never even stepped foot in a chiropractor's office before.

I waited until he was done with his spiel and started asking people to give their names and sell themselves. I got up and left-- with about 10% of the other applicants.

2 comments:

noiselessinfinity said...

And I thought I had been to some awful interviews. My horror story is the persistence of financial counseling agencies constantly wanting me to be part of their pyramid schemes (Primerica was the worst offender there). No straight commission jobs for me.

Damn. Only 10% walked out? We can only hope the other 90% bolted the first chance they had; otherwise, I fear for the future of the species. Quack is right.

Jane D'oh! said...

I can only hope that the other applicants were trying to be polite and snuck out when they started one-on-one interviews. I mean, I left when the "doctor" was done with his speech, and I still felt a little guilty for being disruptive.