JOBSEARCH UPDATE! THE PHONE CALL

In a previous dirge, I have commented on the widespread tendency amongst Brazilian businesses to make unfulfilled promises to return phone calls. It is ironic, then, that the very school to which I was referring in that regard apparently found my number recently on a scrap of paper stuck to the bottom of somebody’s shoe and decided to call me to invite me to a “group dynamic” in São Paulo. Driven by a childish resentment, my first reaction was to berate them for taking six months to communicate with me, making clear my intolerance of such slapdash practices, and to hang up triumphantly, but my diminishing bank balance, coupled with my wife Show’s eroding peninsular of patience, persuaded me to agree to their demands.

On the Sunday before Monday’s group session, I was overwhelmed by a feeling of not wanting to go. I sometimes have these strange and inexplicable intimations of misfortune, but it is hard to tell if they are genuine, or just the result of an idleness-based wishful thinking. I mentioned to Show my reluctance to participate in the organisation’s fustian jamboree, but the visible tightening of her lips, together with her screamed encouragement along the lines that we couldn’t afford to turn down work opportunities, swiftly stifled what misgivings I was entertaining. My sense of foreboding was not unfounded however – it was on our way to the fateful group dynamic that our car was shunted whilst stationary in a traditional São Paulo traffic jam by a baseball-capped, lorry-driving wunderkind.

There were eight or nine of us in the group, and I was the only native speaker of English. Having arrived thirty minutes late, I was relieved to find that the session didn’t involve those tiresome psychological tests where you have to complete pictures, draw rows of vertical lines under time restraints, or play group-based games to prove you’re not a sociopath – or rather, the wrong kind of sociopath, for all corporate entities need suitable ones to fill management-level positions, as No Good Boyo has so succinctly described. All that we had to do was choose a subject to talk about, tell each other about ourselves and control our urge to shout down our contemporaries or make threats. This became difficult when one of the other candidates started prattling on about The Secret. As I’ve intimated before, I have no problem if people find the book or film helpful, but I do find it tedious when people turn it into fact and start preaching about it. This guy obviously had shares in the distributor, such was the zeal with which he summarised the principal theories and encouraged us to get on board. At one point, one of the interviewers admirably blurted, “I’m a bit sick of The Secret, to be honest” in a desperate and not very subtle attempt to change the subject, but our man saw this as just another challenge to be surmounted. I’d be interested to know if he was chosen for one of the positions on offer, and if not, how The Secret fits into this scenario.

I was called again early last week to attend an interview at the local branch of the school. There, the school manager and the coordinator, who looked like she’d been bored, or hadn’t slept, for about the past twelve years, told me about the school and invited me to ask questions. Of course it wasn’t the first question I asked (I know rudimentary interview etiquette), but conversation eventually moved onto the vital issue of pay. The manager asked me how many years of experience I had. I said a soul-wrenching fourteen years. In Brazil, he clarified, and work registered officially, not just cash-in-hand jobs that are teaching’s mainstay. In that case, in teaching, I don’t have any experience, I replied. He repressed a smirk, and informed me that I’d probably start on the bottom rung of their pay ladder, as movement to the next pay band only occurred after every four years of registered work. I repressed a smirk, for entirely different motives.

The manager called me on Friday, and in stately tones, invited me to become part of their team. The grunting and clattering that greeted my polite refusal of his offer can only have been the sound of him falling off his bar stool, since I imagine I could well be the only person ever to turn down a job with his much-vaunted organisation. I have long believed that small is beautiful in all realms of human activity, and I am content to stay at my current place of employment, where the rather excellent owner shares my belief that a teacher should only ever be expected to give two consecutive hours of classes to the same group, amongst other enlightened attitudes. E.F. Schumacher was right, and I am prepared to launch a Secretesque defence of his reputation.

Have you ever turned down a job, and felt churlishly thrilled as a result? Do you work for a large corporate organisation or a small, organic producer of English speakers? Do you ever have inexplicable intimations of misfortune that come true? Please feel free to express your intimate misfortunes.