"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.

Too Good to Be True

I had a phone interview today that was supposed to last 20 minutes, but ended up taking 3. It was for a career in financial services; I know, not something remotely close to my career goals, but hey, they contacted me for once. The form email should have been a tip-off, but it wasn't any skin off my nose to respond, and like I said: they contacted me. Exciting stuff, world.

Apparently I wasn't cut out for this position because I'm new to the area. Everything on my resume was from out-of-state, but the recruiter I spoke with had been hoping that I grew up in this city, and would therefore have plenty of contacts. So I apparently missed out on a fabulous opportunity to bother my friends and family for commission.

I had a similar experience a few weeks ago, where I had a successful interview for an entry-level management position for a marketing company. They do marketing for non-profits! And it's management! Holy crap! Anyway, they brought me back for a second round of interviewing, which involved spending the whole day with someone doing the position I was interviewing for. That involved standing next to a card table in the lobby of a K-Mart while the people I was shadowing tried to sell children's toys, with 5% of the proceeds going to a non-profit. For comparison: Target puts 5% of their income into a foundation for various community projects. Needless to say, I left of my own accord as soon as I was able to get to my car.

It's surprisingly easy to get suckered into these "too good to be true" situations, even when the language of the ad is so obviously inflated to sound a lot better than it really is. There's a bunch of obvious red flags-- don't send money to a potential employer, don't give out your credit card number-- so I haven't been scammed, per se, but gosh is it easy to get me to interview for a technically legitimate but still pretty goddamn sketchy job. I just give them the benefit of the doubt, because hey, what if this is the Best Opportunity Ever? And besides, it doesn't hurt to send in my resume... or talk to someone on the phone... and then I find myself leaning against a gumball machine in the lobby of a big box discount store, smiling at strangers and hoping that they'll buy a stuffed animal. I like to think that I have integrity, but it's amazing what I'll do for the promise of a $50k salary.