Hungover. Oh, so very, very hungover. Bleurgh.
Friday 12 Sept
Had the worst job interview I’ve had since leaving full-time study. I was so clearly not right for the job, it was farcical to see through the interview at all but I was there, they had the questions in front of them and I had taken a seat already and it was just a case of red faces all round as we limped through the process, all present knowing full well I shouldn’t have been there. They still made me sit the fucking database test which tempted me in all sorts of ways to further ridicule this ridiculous morning but was too busy trying not to point around the office laughing at everything I saw. :: sigh :: Well, that’s one rejection letter I’m actually looking forward to receiving… Crawled home, still feeling humiliated and annoyed about wasting a large part of my day and started getting ready for the evening. And the evening was booked for…The Official Leaving Do. And fuck me if it wasn’t a big one…
So, with five people leaving all at the same time, and with the previous night’s clandestine meeting still very much on our minds, I met up with all my former work colleagues for a curry in Soho. Things started badly when I minced into the restaurant in my red high heels, feeling extremely buoyant and purged of all previous bad feelings towards the job and the company… and walked straight into one particularly distraught colleague who had taken one look at those present at the table and had refused to move from the doorway, claiming that there was “no way she was going to spend her Friday night with that horrible fat woman.” It took me and the Chilean all our collective strength to drag her to the table and then the other resignees turned up late so some quite blatantly divided and hostile small talk had to be made until the rest of the gang arrived and diffused the situation.
Despite the bad start, the meal was great and after the initial awkwardness we all had a fantastic time; there were a few moments of whispered discussion as we compared notes on the interviews of the night before but apart from that, it was all very jolly and amusing. We were each presented with an enormous bunch of flowers and a gift and some amusing “You’re Leaving!” cards which really surprised me as I wasn’t expecting anyone to actually remember my name by this point, having so successfully withdrawn from everything so early on… was genuinely touched and having let go of all my bad feelings quite successfully the night before, I was very, very pleased.
Had great moments walking through Soho to some Italian bar for more drinks afterwards as one colleague was constantly circling us like paparazzi, snapping pictures with an OTT camera and making us look like Z-list celebrities bigging it up unnecessarily. The Chilean had abandoned us by that point to help his friends’ band play somewhere in East London which was a shame because I know he would have loved swaggering through town with his own press invasion following him… his loss… A little old lady bolted out of a restaurant and demanded to have her picture taken with us, so convinced was she that we were famous… aww… drinking in the bar went from slightly awkward “gosh, what do we talk about now?” chit chat huddled around small tables to full on, shake your booty and fall over drunk slurring “I love you guys, keep in touch forever, okaaaaaay?” madness. I danced with everyone, over-enthusiastically making up dance steps to songs as unlikely as Delilah, That’s Amore and Here Comes the Hotstepper. Rolled out onto the Soho streets sometime between midnight and dawn and made drunken phonecalls to the Chilean, trying to convince him to join me in going for “one more drink somewhere around here” while he made the counter-suggestions that I join him for drinks “somewhere near where I am.” Since he had no idea where he was, and I had no idea how to get there from Soho, we called it quits and I said goodbye to everyone then lurched home clutching my flowers and trying not to cry or be sick in the cab. Went to bed grinning and feeling like I had a very good time getting closure on my year with this mad, bad and sad little company
No comments:
Post a Comment