True Confessions of a Private Detective – Landing the Job

[Includes Bonus Material – Reflections in the Theme of Zeno’s Dichotomy Paradox]

Private Detective – Landing the Job

[Part I]

[The path of the highly-analytical writer is beset with peril upon each side].¹

What I Could Not Do on My Own

I landed the job as a Background Investigator through collaboration with the woman who would become my transitory spouse and the mother of my child.

Like every white-collar job I was applying for, this one required a bachelor’s degree. I had never attended a university and office work composed a fraction of my employment experience. My CV looked like shit for any office position. Even Admin Assistant jobs called for some kind of degree. But with my girlfriend’s input I highlighted my best qualities and made it sparkle a bit. I submitted it via email, along with a writing sample as requested. After a week I hadn’t heard anything back.

No matter, future-ex-wife said. You’re not going to impress anyone on paper. But if they meet you they will have to hire you. Okay, so I can swing by the office and drop off my resume. Not dressed like that! Jeez! Alright. Whatever you say.

So we pooled together our meager cash. Between the two of us we had just enough to buy me a suit at Macy’s. The salesman was funny – You’re a tough fit; long arms narrow shoulders broad hips skinny neck. Gee, thanks.

It was a steep investment – $250. But I looked like ten thousand bucks in that suit.

Private Detective – Landing the Job

A Fortuitous Acquaintance

I got a haircut and dropped by the office the next day with my resume. Door code to enter the building, so I had to wait for someone to leave to get in. Upon entrance the reception area was slick and attractive in a contemporary style. The receptionist was very kind, and when informed of my purpose went to collect the “HR Manager.”

He ambled around the corner; a stern, muscular man with an accent and a name unpronounceable on the first go. (Forever for many – pronunciation is my sole language aptitude). A brusque fellow, he was clearly annoyed I had infiltrated to personally re-submit an application he had scrapped due to insufficient qualifications. He took it, shook my hand, and said he would be in touch and that he would contact me if it was required. Walking off he stressed that I need not reach out to him to follow up.

The activity in the foyer had attracted the attention of a very tall gentleman with striking black hair and a handsome suit who strode from the corner office to greet me. After asking why I was there, told me I was the first applicant who had ever presented in person to submit an application. He wished me luck, and, gesturing down the hall, said – “Email him every day!” He walked away as I protested that surely that wasn’t necessary. “Every day!” he called, eliciting some laughter from another office as he disappeared back into his own.

I had clearly just met the boss. The receptionist smiled. “He likes you.” I shook my head and told her I was not keen to write to the stern fellow. “Just call the office. I answer the phones, and I can follow up for you.” I thanked her profusely.

Private Detective – Landing the Job

The Opportunity Presents

For weeks I followed up with phone calls. The receptionist was kind, but each time would relay that there had been no forward movement processing applications. At some point, she told me she had enlisted the the president himself to see request the status of my submission. But it was a month before I got the email inviting me for an interview.

The stern fellow, the “CFO” of the company, presided. The departmental director was present as well, though didn’t ask a lot of questions. I thought the interview went well, but as I was leaving the manager handed me a textbook and directed me to a nearby empty cubicle where a pen and pad of paper lay. “Read and summarize this case, you have an hour.”

I hadn’t prepared for that. In fact I hadn’t written a response essay in years. Oh well. The “case” in question was itself a five page court opinion in a significant appellate case. I read through it scribbling down notes structured around a Five Paragraph Essay framework, and started writing frantically. I got through it and handed over my work product.

As I left the building my head was buzzing. It was an odd feeling, but analogous to one I was more familiar with. At various points in my life I have been in excellent physical condition, while at others I have been fairly idle. It felt like jumping from a very slack physical routine into a hard workout – taxing, but not in a discouraging way. There was exhaustion, but also a sort of tingling. It felt like muscles that had been pushed to the limit, but remembered how far beyond they had once been able to push, and were a little excited to take another crack at it.

A week later they offered me the job.

Private Detective – Landing the Job

The Daily Stone

1. Deciding to give us all a break and write a palatable detective piece, I thought to start at the beginning. But if I did that I ought mention my trade before I transitioned to this career. This sorely tempted me to shed light on an occupation that is quite literally tied into the foundation of our modern world, though hidden in mundane obscurity. Fending off the urge to indulge that digression, I still wanted to acknowledge “The Great Financial Crisis” that framed the entire experience. And that subject demands thorough discussion, as it is intimately linked to worldview I am trying to describe.
   
   If I allowed my pathological reductionism to govern, I’d fall through trapdoor after trapdoor until I hit rock bottom in the darkest dungeon my amateur anthropological spelunking has revealed. There, gazing up in awe at the precarious, Cyclopean Babel piercing the very firmament above, I would fall to my knees in despair at ever methodically describing what I see.
   
   It has happened to me before.
   
   So I fight the impulse and charge headlong past the philosophical quagmire…only to bog down in the next one – personal reflections on my prior experiences working in an office.
   
   Several tedious paragraphs emerge, describing the tedious experience that working in an office is for me. If you are sufficiently bored, by all means you can read this drivel if you like. But this whole experience has, for me, prompted sober reflection on Zeno’s Dichotomy Paradox –
   
   I wouldn’t have become a private detective on my own; I had applied for an investigator position previously at another company and failed. But in 2009 I met the woman who would become my wife (for a time) and the mother of my child. By then I had reverted to a grueling family trade for recession-besieged wages. This woman, who taught me so many life skills I had never entertained, was surprised I worked a poorly paid job that didn’t harness my mind. And after I relocated to her town and rented a small room a block away from her I added another 35 minutes to my (at that point sporadic) commute (with associated gas costs).
   
   I knew of course that white collar work pays more than blue collar work. I had worked an office job in Manhattan prior, and while I didn’t make enough to get by in The World City (at least if I wanted to eat, pay rent, and still go out drinking with my friends – which I very much did), it was still more than I had ever made in my life. I lived in the New York metropolitan region for 2 years, with the last year in Manhattan itself. Over the course of that second year I racked up $6,000 in debt – 1/6th of my gross pre-tax income. The obvious unsustainability of my lifestyle was a big determining factor in my hasty retreat.
   
   While originally excited to work “in finance” on Broad Street in Manhattan (a couple blocks from the New York Stock Exchange), and adept at the technical, detail-oriented work, I found it completely uninspiring. I decided I hated office work even more than the variety of others I had endured. I remember an afternoon when a bank rep came into the office to give us a presentation, and it was – So. Fucking. Boring. The presentation occurred right after lunch, and I spent the entire meeting stabbing myself in the leg with a pencil to keep myself from dozing off. In the midst of this agony I was hit with a vivid flashback.
   
   I was a young child. I must have been about three because I wasn’t reading to entertain myself, and I didn’t have a little brother. Rather than pay for a babysitter my parents had dragged me along to an evening meeting with their insurance broker. So I sat there quietly while the three of them had the most protracted and catastrophically dull conversation I had ever witnessed, involving piles of paper without a single drawing on any of them! And I had a terrifying realization, “so this is what happens to you when you grow up!”
   
   In that post-prandial moment in a high-rise office on Broad Street, I realized I had finally arrived. ↩︎