"Good afternoon."
"Good afternoon Peter. It's nice to meet you. My name is Isaac."
"Hi Isaac. Thanks for selecting my resume and giving me a chance to interview today."
"Thank you for asking! I just see being a cashier as a sure fire way to spend more time in the presence of money as I feel that I have a lot I can learn from it. I also am good at counting and, if necessary, at teaching others to count as well. I can picture myself standing behind a cash register, mostly because I painted a self-portrait of myself doing so."
"Well, I do appreciate your enthusiasm which, under different circumstances, I would categorize as certifiable. I'm not sure if at some point I will grow tired or exhausted of your enthusiasm and subconsciously plan your demise or dream of trimming your bangs after hypnotizing you, but at this point it is welcome step up from the usual applicants who I often describe as "luke-warm pork chops" which could have to do with the lunches my wife is packing me as well."
"I think I understand what you are talking about as I also have hunks of cold meat in my lunch bag. Now I only need a job to go to so that I can eat it. I want to say that If I am fortunate enough to get this position then I will work so hard and learn as much as I can as it is but one step of some distance towards my eventual goal of becoming irreplaceable or at least less replaceable then I am right now, which is a lot."
"I wonder if you could tell me about your previous employment experiences or if you prefer you can act them out or use these small figurines I brought along for this purpose or to play with I got bored while conducting these interviews."
"I used to wash dishes at the restaurant down the street or, more accurately, I just repeatedly washed the same dish day in and day out on my back porch. According to the others who eventually were all wearing white lab coats and taking notes on clipboards, the dish was very clean, but it just seemed like I could do a better job.
I also delivered newspapers for a time as my way of making sure that the amount of newsprint that each citizen had in their possession was somewhat equal. I particularly loved rolling the papers and tossing them with a flamboyance that our neighbourhood had an extreme shortage of in my opinion."
"You seem to either genuinely care about others or are really good at making it seem that you do in your stories, which, either way, is a great quality to have as a cashier working directly with the public who seems to need to feel more and more cared for and coddled as time goes on."
"I've noticed that too! People seem to be becoming more sensitive and needy which is why I've decided to write a series of self-help books both so people can better cope with these changing times in which we live and also so they can learn how to take advantage of others depending on your mood when you wake up. But don't worry about me being busy. I am free to pick up as many shifts as you can throw my way, if I am hired of course."
"I hope you understand, in the case that you are hired, that no shifts will literally be thrown your way. We used to deliver the shift schedule that way until we saw an extreme rise in paper cuts and other thrown-paper related injuries which we initially attributed to the randomness of the universe before putting two and two together and also seeing the paper cuts we were inflicting with our own eyes. I'm not sure why we had been trying to use other's eyes for so long. It is just so cumbersome!"
"I also want to volunteer that I am very skilled at handling money. Others have referred to my money-handling as "impressive!" and "timeless" and "mesmerizing, although that could be at least partially due to the disco balls flashing above him" and "why are we standing here watching him handle money in the first place when we could be dancing?" Strangely, as adept as I am at handling the money, I am significantly less good at distributing or packing it in the dirty laundry and those tasks are best performed with the aid of both a team of assistants and a realistic-sounding laugh track."
"Unfortunately our budget won't allow us to hire any assistant cashiers, but we can train you as fully as you are able to be trained. Let me conclude this informative interview by asking you about a few typical scenarios which could come up in this line of work. How would you handle an angry customer especially if you know that you are right?"
"I would handle a customer, angry or not, whether I am correct or not, with kid gloves on. I am fortunate that my mother invested heavily in a company that specialized in making multi-purpose kid gloves and there are always a few pairs just laying around. Customers, in my mind, need to be treated like the delicate flowers always at risk of losing their petals to a wayward wind gust that they are. Customers need to be "bought off" or just given discounts; they need to be "pressed forcibly into my less-than-ample bosom" or just patted, non-emotionally, on the shoulder from time-to-time; they need to feel that they are, in fact, customers who are buying things or else they may grow quite dispondent and disillusioned."
"You've clearly thought a lot about customer care and I am impressed by you, although it is at least potentially possible that I just woke up in an overly impressed mood and that almost anyone short of a psychopath would have left me feeling impressed today. Having said that, I'm fairly certain I'm sitting here right now listening to you and feeling impressed by you at this moment."
"I can't tell you how much of a relief that is to hear that. I literally am not at liberty to tell you - I've been mandated by the courts to not share my relief to hear things as the last time I did that the damages were extensive and I had to see a speech pathologist on five consecutive Wednesday afternoons thus making our bridge group have to reschedule."
"You play bridge?"
"I do, or at least I should say, I do some of the time. Right now, I'm talking with you."
"Thanks for clarifying. Well, I guess we are just about done. Here is one last scenario for you. How would you react if you saw another employee taking money from the cash register?"
"Am I allowed to use force that in some circles may be described as excessive?"
"No."
"Well, I would start by clearing my throat mostly due to this cold that I'm battling right now. Then I would try talking to them, using reason and arguments straight out of Classic Greek philosophy, and if that didn't work, I would dumb it down and read them some picture books that aim to instruct 6 year-olds what right and wrong is. If that didn't work, and you still aren't keen to have me use excessive, and possibly debilitating, force that I am quite well-versed in due to my martial arts training, then I would attempt to outwit them with either some tongue twisters or riddles and while they are occupied, I would reclaim the money and then wrap them in duct tape both to secure them until the authorities can be contacted and also to satisfy my desire to duct tape at least one person each week. I'm looking into either getting help for that or a sponsorship from a local tape company."
"Thank you for your comprehensive answers. We will be in touch."
"Thank you."
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