Worst. Job. Interview. Ever.

Life is a joke.

Seriously.

If you can't take a look at yourself every once in a while and just laugh at your own stupidity, it can get rather dull. As Pablo Neruda once observed, "Laughter is the language of the soul," and a sense of humour is like the little pin that can keep our own inflated pride in check.

There are so many hilarious moments in life that we need to appreciate- the pure slapstick when someone trips over or whacks into something, the communal groan upon the reception of terrible joke, the shriek of laughter that accompanies an outrageous comment or an unexpected confession. The random giggling in the dark at sleepovers, or the hysterical bouts of laughter where you think your heart's going to jump out of your chest because you can't stop shaking.

You see, I applied for this job today. I'm not going to say what it was for obvious reasons, but it was to do with teaching, and I really, really wanted this position. I fixed up the cover letter and the CV last night, and this afternoon I sent off an e-mail to the company fifteen minutes before I was going to leave.

What I wasn't expecting was for the aforementioned company to ring me about eight minutes after I'd sent the e-mail.

Seriously, who does that?!

At the time of the call, I was getting changed in my room. When the phone rang, I snatched it off my crumpled bedspread and answered it.

Ah. A phone interview!

The phone line on her end was bad. Exceptionally bad. It sounded like that garbled radio transmission sampled in Transformers, except instead of telling me her encrypted plans to destroy the Earth, she was asking me about my teaching experience.

"Uh...."

(I don't have teaching experience.)

"Well...I've done some tutoring..." (This was a grand total of three times before they realised that I wasn't teaching their child anything useful, I was just cynically and bitterly ranting on about the idiocy of teenage love for two hours and blaming dear old Friar Lawrence for everything that went wrong in Romeo and Juliet)

"...and I've taken a few classes at my old school..." (Grand total of ONE. And it was such a debacle that they never asked me to do it again. Not my fault if none of the kids READ THE DAMN BOOK BEFORE I TOOK THE CLASS.)

So I was trying desperately to hear this woman on this terrible scratchy phone line, and halfway through the interview I suddenly realised that I was talking to this lovely lady whilst I was had no clothes on.

I had to laugh. I was hopping up and down on one foot trying to find a clean shirt, conducting a civilised phone interview with a lovely lady on the other end. It was a very pleasant and polite conversation, and I was just thinking to myself, "If she could see me now.."

And during this realisation, my father started yelling up the stairs that I was going to be late.

And then he used the intercom (LOUDLY) while I was still trying to hear the interviewer on the phone.

I couldn't tell my dad that I was on the phone, and considering my state of undress I couldn't actually run down and provide a series of furious hand signals to show this. Furthermore, one hand was clamped over my mobile and I was still hopping up and down mentally shrieking "Where the fuck are my jeans?!". Whilst she was asking about availability, I was scrabbling under my bed for aforesaid jeans, and digging through a giant pile of clothes. Unfortunately, this carefully balanced pile happened to topple right off the chair.

"So why did you apply for this position?"
"Well...I love kids..."

(Damn, no socks...)

"...and I like teaching..."

(Where's that shirt?! Wheeeeeeeere?!!!!)

"YOU'RE GOING TO BE LATE AGAIN!"

Aaaaaaarggghhhh....

It was rather disastrous interview. She actually gave me the 'let-down' speech before the formal notification next week- "We've got 80-100 applications...and we're only accepting about 6-8 teachers."

Yay.

It's a pity, because it was something I really wanted to do. But even though I was disappointed, I couldn't help but laugh at the whole thing afterwards.

It was just so ridiculous.

Looks like I'm stuck selling remote control cars over Christmas.