You know it’s the end of the interview when...

Last Tuesday night I flew down to D.C. for my LAST interview. I left the hotel early on Wednesday morning to beat traffic and made it to the site early enough to run through the presentation I had to give just one more time in the car. I didn’t have a lot to eat that morning because I was a little nervous and didn’t have much of an appetite, but it was only going to be a morning interview, so I figured I’d have plenty of time for lunch afterward.

The interview was pretty low-key. I met with the group supervisor for about an hour, then he took me on a two-hour tour of their lab facilities. After that we went back to his office and talked a little bit more, then he rounded up the rest of his group to be an audience for my presentation. We finished around noon, and since the interview was essentially over, I was now really looking forward to eating lunch. But the supervisor asked me if I’d be interested in talking with some other people in the group to get a better idea of what they do on a daily basis, so to be the good interviewee, I said yes.

We started walking down the hall toward another guy’s office and the supervisor started telling me about his recent LASIK surgery. He went into all kinds of gory detail about the procedure and how his eyes felt like they were on fire afterward as we strolled down the hall. I started to feel a little light-headed by the time we got to the office - I reached out for the doorframe to steady myself, but before I could sit down, I started getting tunnel vision.

The next thing I knew, I was flat on the floor on my back. Apparently I passed out and fell straight backwards. In the process, I guess I dumped the rest of my cup of water onto myself, the floor, and my interviewer (let’s call him Bob). As I was lying down, getting my bearings, I overheard ambulance sirens and Bob told me that he had called the paramedics. When they got to the building, they stormed right in and put me in the neck collar, on the backboard, and rushed me into the ambulance. I gave my medical history and the description of the kind of pain I was in to at least five different people.

I’ve fainted before, so this all seemed like a really big fuss for something that wasn't really a big deal. But by the time I was velcroed into the collar and on the board, it was a little late to say no. They took me to a nearby hospital, where I had an EKG, a chest CT, and gave away large amounts of bodily fluids. It took four different nurses and 9 different “sticks” to get enough blood drawn for the tests and to get an IV in for the iodine they had to inject as dye for the chest CT.

When I was in high school, I had to get a tuberculosis test before I could volunteer at the local hospital. When I went to my doctor’s office to get tested, the nurse there chuckled as she jabbed the stubby needle into my arm a couple times. “Gosh, you’ve got tough skin!” she said. As the second nurse at the hospital last week was trying to draw blood out of my shriveled veins, I told her what the other nurse had told me back in high school. “Well,” she said, “it might sound silly, but you really do have tough skin.”

It was sort of a toss-up which was more uncomfortable: getting poked with needles over and over or getting the chest CT. The actual scan didn’t hurt, but the iodine has to go into your veins quickly right before the scan, and that burns when it goes in. It makes you feel warm all over and kind of like you peed in your pants...

A little while after I originally got to the hospital, Bob showed up to make sure that I was okay. It was nice of him to come, since it sucks to be in the hospital by yourself, but then he started asking me questions about my desired salary range and telling me about how his company does all sorts of unique work. I nodded along for a while, mostly because it was nice to have a distraction from all the trouble my tough skin was causing, but later on, I just couldn’t do it anymore. I have no interest in interviewing in a hospital gown, no matter what job it’s for.

I finally managed to convince Bob that he didn’t have to feel bad about leaving me in the hospital, so for a while I just slept on my bed in the hallway while I waited for my test results (only the really sick or injured people got rooms). I was exhausted with all the drama of the day and my missing blood. When I woke up, magically, Josh was there.



I went home with a mostly clean bill of health; thankfully, no serious cause for the fainting. And luckily, the HR department at the company was very generous in re-booking me a flight home the next day and not complaining when I brought the rental car back late.

One of the nurses from the hospital asked me if my chances of getting the job were better or worse after fainting. I have no idea, but I’m not sure I could take the job even if I got an offer, just out of sheer embarrassment from the whole mess.

Stuck in a truck

As I was walking to work this morning, I noticed a few police cars blocking an intersection that I normally cross. I looked closer and saw that they were intentionally blocking the on-ramp to Storrow Drive, a major highway that runs along the Charles River. A semi was stuck on the ramp - the turn was too tight for the trailer to make. The sad thing was that there's a huge sign at the ramp entrance that says "No Trucks." I guess the truck driver was just following another one's lead - last night a different semi truck got stuck on Storrow Drive:


All of this reminded me of the time that Josh and I drove a big yellow Penske truck across the country a couple summers ago. The truck was full of my crap because I was moving from Houston to Boston to start grad school. We mapquested the whole route before we left Houston, but we didn't have street maps for every state in between.

Anyway, we did fine until we got to New York City. Our directions took us through areas that were relatively close to Manhattan (which, looking back, was really a recipe for disaster in itself), and at one point we had to get onto a road that had a "No Trucks" sign. The sign didn't specify why trucks weren't allowed, and it's not like we were carrying any hazardous materials or had a heavy tractor-trailer. I had rented the smallest truck they had, which was really just one step up from a large van. Also, we didn't know any other way to get around New York City, and we only had about 3 seconds to make the decision, so we decided to get on the road.

After a couple miles, it became abundantly clear why trucks weren't allowed on this stretch of highway - the low, curved bridges. The writing on the truck said that its height was 9 feet. The rental agreement, however, specified that we shouldn't go under anything that was lower than 10' 6".

At any other time, and in any other car, those stone bridges would have been very picturesque. They sloped gently over the road and many were covered with moss or other plants, which shone in the afternoon sun. However, we were in the big yellow truck, and the bridges kept getting lower and lower. We passed 11 feet, 10 feet, and then just barely above 9'. My heart was pounding and Josh's knuckles were white. The next bridge came up quickly just after we rounded a corner. The sign read 8' 8".

I panicked. There was no room, or time, to get over into the left lane where the peak of the bridge was higher. Josh slowed down as much as he could in the few feet that we had left, and I held my breath, preparing myself for the sickening scrape and jerk to a halt.

Miraculously, either the bridge or our truck was generously labeled. We slid under the bridge without scraping anything - and then we both started breathing again. Thankfully, there were only a few miles left to go on this road before we got back on the interstate, and the rest of the bridges were above 9 feet.

Once we got to Boston, our directions told us to get onto Storrow Drive to go the rest of the way to my new apartment. Josh refused. There was no way either of us was taking any more chances with low bridges. At least on Storrow Drive though, they have the good sense to post why large trucks shouldn't get on the road.

Maybe height is the default reason why trucks aren't allowed on certain roads, so that's why it's not usually posted. I don't know; I'm not much of a truck driver. I never paid much attention to those signs on the interstate that show the clearance height of upcoming overpasses, but after our trip through New York, I notice them all the time. And these ones hit close to home...