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  “Jen Nilsson?” Her hands enclosed Jen’s in something that was more of a clasp than a handshake: cool, dry, and without pressure or movement. “Come in, come in. Have a seat,” she said as she indicated a chair that proved, once Jen sat in it, to be designed such that one was forced to choose between either sprawling back comfortably in it, or perching carefully on the edge, back straight and knees together. Jen perched.

  Alexia resumed her place behind her desk. Until that moment, Jen had not given much credence to the claim that sitting behind a desk implied power because the person behind the desk had her legs hidden, while the person facing her had hers exposed, but this claim now seemed readily believable.

  Alexia leaned forward, elbows on her desk, and entwined her hands thoughtfully as she regarded Jen. “Now, I’ve read your résumé, and you seem like a very capable young woman,” she began, her voice betraying no clear accent, yet somehow expressing an unmistakable foreignness in tone and rhythm. “However, at Aspire we do not look merely for the capable. We require some element of the extraordinary. Not just anyone can work here. And having been, if I may say, the inspiration behind the acquisition of the Courier brand, I feel strongly that we must have the right person in this role. Our last line director was not quite right.”

  Jen offered tactful sympathy over the difficulties of not having the right person.

  “Essential to my vision,” Alexia continued, “is that we must insist at every turn upon the integrity of the brand. Courier is an iconic brand. It must again be inconceivable that a business woman not have her Courier with her. And for the modern woman, that means a technology bag. Do you know technology?”

  Unaccustomed to such an open-ended, not to say unanswerable, line of questioning, Jen attempted to provide a satisfactory answer to this. Alexia fixed her with a look of complete attention that seemed to interject “not enough yet” at every pause, and Jen quickly began to feel herself both running on too long yet not having said enough.

  At last, Alexia cut her off in midsentence. “Well, well. Of course, this role is not a creative role. We have the very best designers providing creative input to the line. This role is responsible for assuring that that vision is executed flawlessly. Can you explain your ability to execute flawlessly?”

  This seemed a challenge that must be met with a challenge in return. “I don’t think you’ll find someone who can tell you honestly she delivers flawless execution. As a product-line manager, I’ve been responsible for coordinating the work of teams all over the world. Errors are inevitable. The key is developing checks and processes such that problems are identified early and addressed quickly.” She attempted to illustrate this with several examples.

  “Yes, yes.” Alexia waved a hand somewhat dismissively. “But in so many companies, this simply means making sure that you follow the plan, that you obey authority. Organization, problem solving: these I can see you have. But are you able to work without direction? No, no. Not enough. Are you able to challenge authority, challenge conventional wisdom?”

  “Surely if I simply say yes, that is itself utterly conventional?”

  “Examples!” Alexia cried. “Always examples. Can you provide an example of a time you challenged authority?”

  After briefly marshaling her thoughts, Jen laid out an example where she had turned her management around on an issue.

  Alexia shook her head. “No, no, no. That’s just a case of standing up for what you think is the right thing to do. Very good, but what I want to know about is a case of standing up to your management. Slaying sacred cows. Those times you have to fight, fight, fight.”

  Jen tried another example.

  “Once again,” Alexia replied, with a theatrical expression of despair. “This is simply a case of arguing for what you think is right. When have you fought authority? Really fought it?”

  Fighting down rage, Jen decided that the time to defy authority was now. “In that case, I’m not sure how I can answer your question. Why would I fight authority if it wasn’t a case of arguing for what I thought was right? Would you respect me for having confronted authority in order to argue for something I thought was wrong?”

  Alexia threw up her hands. “You see? It’s so hard. We need people who are willing to stand up against authority and conventional wisdom. But what is business? You come in, you have your list of things to do. You have your boss to please. You play by the rules. You seem like a very, very smart young woman, but just the other day I was telling someone younger than you, ‘I don’t know if I can hire you. It may be that other businesses have spoiled you and you can’t think anymore.’ Not everyone can work here. It takes someone who can really be an Aspire employee.”

  A willowy young woman with very blonde hair was standing outside the office, tapping on the glass. Alexia held up a finger: “one minute.”

  “What do you think,” she asked, fixing Jen with an appraising gaze. “Can you be an Aspire employee?”

  Jen shrugged and spread her hands. “I don’t know how you can expect me to provide a useful answer to that question. If I say yes, I may just be saying it. And why would I say no when I’m here interviewing for a job?” She rose. “It looks like it’s time for my next interview. Thank you so much.”

  She reached out, and Alexia performed the not-quite-handshake again. The two women regarded each other for a moment. “Good luck!” Alexia said and opened the door.

  “Hi!” The young woman introduced herself by a name that Jen instantly forgot, and she explained that Kim had asked her to escort Jen to the next interview. Jen desperately wished she could have a moment or two to regain her calm, but that was not how the game was played. Instead, she followed the admin, meditating on the fact that, in addition to having a comparatively plain fashion sense by Aspire standards, she was also, despite her athleticism, a heavyweight.

  “You’re going to be meeting next with Larry Burkett. He’s the vice president of Marketing Analytics. Most people really like Alexia,” the admin confided. “But Larry is a tough interview. Still, you look tough.”

  “Thanks,” Jen replied, wondering what a tough interview would be like if the last one had been easy.

  Larry resided in another curve-walled glass office, which was different from Alexia’s in every furnishing except for the awkward chair. Larry himself was an even greater contrast: well over six feet tall, heavy, dressed in a plaid flannel shirt, suspenders, and studiously tattered khakis, with ragged hair that was pushed back from his face without apparent styling of any sort.

  “I’m responsible for marketing analytics,” he explained, “which means, of course, that I’m at constant war with all those who are ‘fashion’ driven. You see, there are two ways to look at the world: gut and facts. Which way do you look at it?”

  “Given the intro, does anyone answer ‘gut’?” Jen asked.

  “Is that a fact-based answer or a gut answer?” Larry countered.

  “It’s not based on numbers, but it’s based on observation of human tendency.”

  Larry smiled. “All right then. Give me an example in which you’ve changed your beliefs about something based on data.”

  Jen had begun to sketch out an example from experience when the door opened and Alexia entered.

  “Larry, do you mind?” she asked. He shrugged. “Jen?” she asked. “Did you think our interview went well?”

  Jen’s mind reeled. “I thought I did the best that I could,” she answered.

  Alexia fixed her with an appraising look. “I believe you thought it went rather badly. You did well, though. I’m impressed with you. You did very well. What do you think about that?”

  The rapid changes in tone were taking their toll on Jen’s calm, but she fought down frustration and kept control of her voice. “I’m glad you found it revealing. I tried to answer everything as well as I could.”

  “I just wanted to tell you that I was impressed,” Alexia said and left as abruptly as she had entered.

  Larry fixed her w
ith an appraising gaze.

  “How did that conversation with Alexia make you feel?” he asked.

  “I’m glad to hear that it went well,” Jen responded.

  “How were you feeling about the interview when you finished it.”

  “I couldn’t tell.”

  “Fit is incredibly important here,” Larry explained. “You wouldn’t be here if you weren’t incredibly smart and if you hadn’t proved yourself in your previous jobs. The reason for talking to you in person is to find out if you have what it takes to work here and not only survive, but thrive. What do you think so far?”

  Jen attempted to sketch out an answer that expressed her eagerness to be challenged and her excitement about the opportunity itself—anything other than the baldly stated “I really need a job”, which was, in fact, the only thing keeping her sane.

  Larry cut her off. “Do you always talk so much when you’re nervous?”

  Jen seethed. “No.”

  Larry cocked an eyebrow, but Jen held any further words in. Silence stretched out to the point of agony. “All right,” Larry said. “Let’s go back to my last question. Tell me about a time you’ve changed your beliefs based on data.”

  Two more interviews followed. If Jen had been asked to provide a detailed account of them later, she would have found it difficult to do so. Then she was shown back to the lobby and stepped out into the street. Again she confronted the tangle of modern sculpture above the inverse fountain, though now that she saw it from the vantage point of one leaving the Aspire Brands headquarters, she noticed that the metal beams aligned to form an italic A.

  Walking to the station and riding Caltrain, she felt herself still under scrutiny, holding her expression rigidly neutral. By the time she reached her car, control had become a necessity. She drove home in tooth-gritted silence.

  “How was the interview?” Katie asked as Jen entered the condo.

  Jen stalked to the liquor cabinet, pulled out a bottle of Buffalo Trace, and poured herself a couple fingers’ worth. With this she retreated to the armchair.

  “Bad?” Katie asked.

  Jen took a slow sip. “It could have been better,” she responded.

  Her phone rang. Jen answered it and heard the voice of Cathy Bradford, the recruiter who had contacted her about the Aspire job.

  “Jen! How’s it going?”

  Jen segregated all her feelings about the interviews from the sound of her voice and pushed out a cheerful tone. “Oh, just resting up after the interviews. I feel like I did the best I could.”

  “Well, they were very impressed,” Cathy replied. “They would like to extend you an offer if you are interested.”

  The sheer unexpectedness of it, the contrast with the way she had been treated in the interviews, seemed an offense. She crammed all her frustration to the back of her mind and responded with faux excitement.

  “That’s great news. I need to see the offer, of course, before I know my response, but I’d certainly be excited to consider an offer.”

  “Wonderful. They’ll be very glad to hear that. I think you can expect to see a copy of the offer letter via e-mail tomorrow morning.”

  “I’ll be looking out for it. Thanks.” Cathy hung up.

  Jen threw her phone at the couch as hard as she could and hurled a stream of profanity after it.

  “What’s wrong?” Katie asked.

  “They offered me the job.”

  The offer arrived midmorning on Wednesday, and it was everything she could have wished, except that, after her interview experience, the idea of working for Aspire gave her almost the same stomach-churning feeling as thinking about her current unemployment.

  She printed out the offer letter so that she could stare at it more easily. The salary written on it was deeply gratifying. And surely working there couldn’t be as much like psychological warfare as the interviews had been. She wouldn’t be reporting to Larry or Alexia, perhaps would not even see them often. The interview with her potential boss, a blandly managerial woman named Bryn Masters, had not gone badly, although, as the final interview of the four, Jen could remember few details from it. Why let a couple of bad interviews turn her away from an opportunity this good?

  But even as she tried to convince herself that she should take the job, she knew that she did not want to.

  Shortly after noon, an e-mail from Cathy Bradford came through. “Just wanted to see if you’d received the offer from Aspire and get your thoughts.”

  Jen wrote back, “I got the offer, and it does look like a good one. I need a day or two to think about it, as I may be on the verge of receiving an offer for another position as well.”

  Then she e-mailed the recruiters for the three other jobs she had heard back about, warning them that she had just received an offer for another job, but telling each one that she was, in fact, very enthusiastic about that opportunity instead. This ploy, however, did not produce the results she had hoped for, as, over the next several hours, each one wrote back cautiously expressing congratulations and saying that, although she would pass along the word that time was of the essence, she could not make any promises.

  Katie came home in the afternoon to find Jen watching daytime TV.

  “So, did you get the offer from that job?”

  “Yes,” Jen confessed. “I got it. It’s a good offer, too.”

  “So . . . is that good? Are you happy?”

  Jen flipped channels listlessly. “I don’t know. That was the most psychotic set of interviews I’ve ever had. And I don’t know why they offered me the job so quickly. I’m worried they’re crazy to work for, or they’re in some really bad situation that I’ll be blamed for, or just that I’ll really hate working there.”

  “So . . . are you going to turn them down?”

  “I don’t know.” They both stared at the TV. A dubbed Japanese game show was playing in which contestants had to pick which of three doorways to try to crash through: two covered over with white paper, the third with drywall.

  “Should I make dinner, or are you planning to sit here and zone all night?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Katie retrieved a Coke from the refrigerator and sat down next to her sister. “Look, Jen, this isn’t good. If the job makes you this unhappy, don’t take it. You said you’ve got enough money to keep going for six months. You’re smart. You’ll get another job.”

  “What if I don’t?”

  “You always have before.”

  “But I haven’t gone turning down good jobs before. This is a good job. It pays more than my last one. A lot more. It’s a promotion. It’s being product-line director for the Courier bag relaunch. It’s a great opportunity. I wouldn’t deserve another job if I turned this down.”

  “Was that a Courier bag that Grandma always used to carry?”

  “See? Iconic. Even you know what it is. I can’t turn that down, can I?”

  Katie shrugged. “I don’t see why not. If it makes you unhappy, don’t do it.”

  Jen sighed. “Why are we watching this?” She flipped channels until she settled on a cooking competition in which men and women in chef outfits seemed to be competing to see who could cut vegetables most violently.

  “If you don’t like what I have to say, maybe you should call someone else about it and ask their advice. Call Dad.”

  “Dad’s had the same job for the last fifteen years. What would he know?”

  “Well, I don’t know then,” Katie said in an exasperated tone, getting up from the couch and heading into the kitchen. “I’m making enchiladas and Spanish rice for dinner. It’ll be ready in thirty minutes, so if you want to call Dad before dinner’s ready, turn off the TV soon.”

  “Hey, Dad,” said Jen, in an unusually meek tone. “Do you have a little time? I really need your advice.”

  “Sure, honey. What’s up?” Even over the phone her father’s voice carried the tone of bedtime stories and checks for monsters in the closet. Jen found herself instinctively curling
up and hugging a couch cushion.

  She described the job at Aspire and her fears in relation to it.

  “Look,” her father said when she had finished. “I don’t have your experience with trading jobs and all that. You’ve had an amazing career, and you know your mother and I are both really proud of what you’ve done. But I can tell you this based on my experience: You spend more hours each day working than you do at home. You’d better make sure that it’s something you can be happy doing. It’s normal to feel a little nervous when you’re starting something new, but if you really think you’ll be unhappy at this place, don’t take the job. It’s not worth it.”

  Next, she tried Dan, but the advice was similar.

  “You know me, Jen. I tried one year of corporate law and decided it didn’t matter how much it paid: I’d rather be stuck writing wills and divorce decrees than combing through merger documents sixteen hours a day. If you think you’ll enjoy it, go for it. If you think you’ll be miserable, it’s just not worth it.”

  Jen slept badly, and the next morning, rather than going for her run or getting dressed, she sat at the kitchen table in her pajamas, coffee cradled in her hands, and stared at the acceptance e-mail. Each time she questioned it, it responded with the same bland phrases and compelling figure. Finally, she hit Reply and typed out, “I would be happy to accept this offer. Please let me know what the next steps are.”

  Within the hour, e-mails from Aspire’s HR Department started to make their way back: Background check. Drug test. Tax information. Tentative start date in ten days, assuming no problems showed up on the above.

  Later in the day she received an e-mail from Bryn. “So excited to have you joining the Aspire team, Jen. Just wanted to check: Do you have a passport? I’m going to need to have you go to China the week after next.”