…And Other Duties
Standing Room Only
My nephew — like many people — has been searching for a job for more than a year. It's become a frustrating Search & Destroy mission because he searches through hundreds of job openings, only to have his hopes destroyed by a machine-generated rejection letter — sometimes within minutes.
He recently landed an interview at a dental practice — the most bizarre and chaotic one I've ever heard about. The job was a front-office receptionist and would require the new hire to answer the phone and check patients in/out for appointments, among other duties. No sweat! He'd done that type of work and was fully ready to sit down and discuss his qualifications — only there was no chair.
Did Indeed say BYOC?
Apparently it was billed as a "job shadow" interview, so he spent his time standing behind the current receptionist — whom he'd be replacing — watching her complete typical daily tasks as she outlined more job specs. In addition to customer service, he learned he'd also be tech support, responsible for troubleshooting and resolving any computer-related glitch throughout the practice. Obviously they need more than one person.
Indeed they do.
If that wasn't enough to make my nephew head for the door, this overworked woman then overshared. She went full "Dear Abby" on him, explaining that she'd moved across the country for love, had a child, broke up with the father, and now she planned to move back home at the end of the month.
Was staff biographer also in the job description?
During her exposition, her son wandered into the room — twice — to ask if it was time to eat. Both times he was told to wait.
Amidst all this chaos, the dentist for whom he'd be working kept popping her head into the receptionist area like a gopher to ask a question or two — Do you know how to process insurance claims? Can you x-ray patients? The printer only prints odd page numbers, can you fix that?
Then almost as soon as he finished answering, she'd disappear to return to the patient she was currently treating. BRB!
The next time she came back, she asked what he was looking to make per hour. My nephew threw out a number at the high end of the advertised rate, and the dentist hit him with a long, pregnant pause. Like, third-trimester.
She never really answered and didn't pay him for his "shadow" work day, yet my nephew was still considering accepting the job, if offered.
Perhaps the possibility of adding Barnum & Bailey's Family Dental to his resume was the draw.
Omitted Admissions
As chaotic as that interview was, it was the most honest one my nephew will ever experience.
The dentist wandering in mid-sentence, the kid repeatedly asking about food, the receptionist narrating her breakup, the job quietly becoming two jobs. That's not a badly run interview. That's the office operating at full normal speed — with a stranger standing in the middle.
Most interviews only show you the version of a place that doesn't fully exist. It's two people giving Oscar-worthy performances for forty-five minutes. The information you actually need from the other person is only revealed when someone forgets to perform. And that usually doesn't happen until after you've taken the job.
A few months into a new job I realized everything was urgent until I delivered it, then it sat for two weeks. Frustrated, I said something and learned that the first rule of Fight Club is you don't talk about Fight Club.
Sometimes you slowly realize that one person's mood sets the temperature for the whole office. They were a chipper Dr. Jekyll during the interview, but whenever their Mercury goes retrograde, everyone quietly tiptoes around Mr. Hyde.
These kinds of issues are rarely exposed in an interview that goes well. But a smooth interview isn't dishonest. It's just the one where nobody forgot to perform.
The receptionist didn't hide the IT duty. She mentioned it while doing five other things. It never made the listing because the person who wrote the listing stopped seeing it.
You've done this too. You’ve described your job to someone and left out the thing you stopped noticing years ago.
Question of the Week
What would the person replacing you have to find out on their own?
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