Requested by: N/A
SUMMARY: A stilted interviewer gets a lesson in job skills when Kai handles a role-play phone call with crushing success.
Kai sat stiff as a statue as he watched the HR interviewer read through his CV. The corners of the paper were slightly burnt from his last job back when he was still living with his parents, but you could still read what it said. He had to get a job in order to pay rent for his dorm room so he applied for the first job the school threw at him. It was a job as one of the assistants for Fred Finely. He was a five-time award-winning reporter in downtown Ninjago City who had a team of assistants to help him.
He would only have to work evenings and weekends, so that meant it wouldn't interfere with his studies.
When he started looking for a job he was told it helped if he did some research on his potential employer, but Kai felt he might have gone a bit overboard. As the interviewer read through his CV, she kept giving him odd glances that slightly unsettled the vampire teen. He tried not to let it show.
"So your last job was at a bakery?" She asked, slightly confused. "What happened?"
"Fired."
"And what was the cause of your termination?"
"The fire." He replied, but he said it in such a nonchalant way that she didn't take him seriously. She shrugged it off and would contact his previous employer later.
"So this isn't just like a normal assistant's job, Fred Finely's office is like high-volume." She explained and he nodded in understanding. "He will jump down your throat if you drop one call; are you even confident in your phone skills?" She asked in a slightly supercilious way that really irritated him. It also didn't help that he didn't understand what she meant when she said Mr. Finely would jump down his throat.
"So long as Mr. Finely is down my throat he doesn't remove my vocal cords and sell them on the black market."
"Mr. Finely does not appreciate sarcasm." She glared.
"A healthy set of vocal cords can sell for upwards of thirty thousand dollars and in this economy that is nothing to joke about." He frowned. He didn't think he was being sarcastic, but obliviously the interviewer didn't think so.
"It's also imperative that Mr. Finely's assistant be able to work long nights."
"Oh that won't be a problem, I'm a night person." He replied, barely suppressing a smirk.
"The thing about this job is that it's important for you to be able to think on your feet." She said, with another condescending tone. "I think we should do a little phone test."
"Sure."
"Okay, let's say that Mr. Finely is in a meeting with an A-list client, and he's told you to hold all of his calls." She suggested and then pretended to be a ringing phone with her right hand. Kai was caught off guard by this, but quickly recovered and copied the motion with his left hand.
"Mr. Finely office." He said, playing along.
"This is Mrs. Finely, I need to speak to my husband immediately!" She exclaimed in a high-pitched, over-exaggerated, whiny voice that sounded like nails on a chalkboard to Kai.
"He's in a meeting madam Finely, may I take a message?"
"Oh no, you pull him out if that meeting now you-"
"What will that accomplish Mrs. Finely?" Kai asked, stunning the lady for a moment. To be honest, he just wanted her to stop talking in the ridiculous voice but he was already too far gone to back out now. "Wielding power over your husband won't save your marriage, it will only make him feel smothered which will inevitably lead him to smother you with a pillow in your sleep, but being smothered in your sleep isn't the worst way to die."
"W-What's... the worst way t-to die?" She asked in a shaky voice. Kai almost licked his lips as he eyed her neck, able to hear her thundering, terrified heart from where he was sitting.
"It's in the top ten behind painkiller overdose and accidental death from autoerotic asphyxiation, but it is one that will leave you with unfinished business, which will force you to be stuck on Earth haunting your husband for as long as he lives and we both know that with his new vegan diet and exercise routine Mr. Finely most likely had twenty years left in him; do you really want to be stuck in limbo for twenty years Mrs. Finely?"
"No, I don't." She whimpered in a weak and petrified voice.
"Excellent, I'll leave word that you called." He finished before he lowered his hand and silently stared at the interviewer. She was almost completely frozen. The only movement or sounds she made were the slight movement of her chest rising as her heartbeat a million miles per hour. They sat there in silence, staring each other in the eye until she finally looked away and cleared her throat.
"Okay... can you start Monday night?"...
