A friend of mine has an interview coming up, and it's a pretty big deal so he spends a fair amount of time and energy angsting about it. It's a lunch interview, and it reminded me of a story a professor of comparative politics I had told once about her worst and funniest interview.
The woman, by the way, was really pretty spectacular. She was young, pretty, brilliant, and she taught the Hungarian electoral system like it meant a damn to her. She and her husband were probably the two most popular young profs on campus. Once she made a comment about "feeling stoned" during an 8 AM class then hastily clarified "I'm not though. Seriously. I mean believe me, if I were stoned, I'd be a lot more interesting to all of you. And you'd probably be a lot more interesting to all of me."
Anyway, one day toward the end of the year she was talking to a couple of us about some interviews she'd had before she landed her job teaching the sons and daughters of bored lower upper middle class intellectuals in the middle of the corn. She said there was one job (I forget where and it probably maybe wouldn't be ethical to say anyway) where one of the men interviewing her had a very unusual last name. It was a lunch interview and they were making small talk, waiting for the waiter, so she commented on the name, and remarked that the only other person she'd ever known with that name had been in her graduating class. Because she was nervous, and is one of those people who talks too much when nervous, she went on a longish tirade about what an insufferable, pompous twat the guy had been and then, when she noticed the interviewer staring botkins at her, she laughed nervously. He cleared his throat and remarked "Yes well, his mother and I are still very proud of him."
I laughed, once I did the social calculus and assumed it would be okay to laugh, and this one guy said something like "Holy God what did you do?"
The prof smiled and said "Well, I did the only thing that made sense. I ordered the lobster. I'd heard good things."
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