(caption: I almost worked for this woman. This is her actual booking shot from June 14, 1989, when Zsa Zsa Gabor was booked for slapping officer Paul Kramer after a traffic violation. To my chagrin, she was not sentenced to the electric chair, merely 72 hours in the El Segundo pokey.)
What is that phrase the Ron Burgandys of the world like to mutter into the TV camera?
“Caught on tape…”
While he was offering tidbits about why he would make a jack dandy employee for the building firm, company officials played back some surveillance video from just the day before. In the tape, said young dude turned out to be the same sneaky fellow who was filmed stealing a $100 tool from the company. A second tape showed the potential employee breaking into a car in the company parking lot and boosting about $1,000 worth of goodies.
It’s usually not a good sign when, during the interview, the police come and arrest you. Needless to say, the applicant did not get the job.
I’ve yet to be arrested while applying for a job, but I am still young. I have had some doozies when it comes to interviews.
Clear as a bell, I remember applying for my first full-time position with The Formerly Mighty Signal. That was in 1974. I had been working for years as a stringer for my best friend, Phil Lanier, who was sports editor then. When Phil resigned, I figured I was the logical choice to take over his job. Phil, father-like (he’s 36 hours older than me) sternly warned that Ruth Newhall, whose last name was the same as the town I lived in, editor and wife of the owner, said she had: “…a few problems with me.”
Who hasn’t.
Phil further warned for me to dress up like I was going to the prom, sit up straight, say nothing remotely funny, lower my shoulders and don’t make eye contact when I talked with Ruth.
Ruth thought at 24 I was insufferable, goofy, not funny, too much trouble and wrote like a chimp who had consumed one too many retard bananas.
She was right.
I brought in a paisley scrapbook with flowers on it holding my writing clips. Ruth offered a look as if I had plopped a pile of wet leaves on her desk. She carefully went through the book, taking what seemed 3 hours to peruse my work. It was probably just 10 minutes.
Finally, she looked through me and said, most icily with a voice vibrating like Katherine Hepburn: “You know, I never liked you…”
I can still feel my stomach tighten from that moment.
I got the job. Granted. I was on Permanent Probation With Intern Pay. It ended up being the dearest employment experience I’ve ever had. Ruth and I went on to become dear friends and mutual fans. But that was only after a couple of thousand years after journalism bootcamp.
Other job possibilities didn’t go as swimmingly well.
Years ago, I applied for a position with some advertising firm in downtown Los Angeles. I had some advertising and marketing experience. While the job was out of my normal parameters, it was creative and I felt I was at least in the ballpark to get a call.
I did.
I was working at the ranch. It was summer and I was covered in sweat, dust, pesticides, diesel soot from the tractor, bird poop and squished bugs. Checking messages, the owner left an enthusiastic plea that he wanted to see me at once and how excited he was over my resume. I called back. We hit it off. I was thinking six-figures and a Porsche allowance. He asked if there was any way I could possibly drive downtown that late morning and I explained I was cleaning out a barancha with a tractor and was filthier than a Democratic congressman. That seemed to excite him all the more. His enthusiasm sold me. I showered, shaved and jumped into a suit that was in style sometime during the late 19th century. Within two hours, I’m sitting across from this cheery fellow in a skyscraper penthouse overlooking the Miracle Mile.
We made the usual small talk and hit it off like long lost fellow veterans from the Insanity Wars of Life. I noticed he hadn’t mentioned anything yet about the position. After several more minutes of conversation and light humor, I gently steered our talk toward the job opening.
“Oh. That,” the boss said. “I don’t think you’d be right for it. It’s just that I loved your resume so much, it was so creative and you seemed like you lead such an interesting life, I just had to meet you.”
I’ve lived a hard life and there are few things during this internment in God’s Human Practical Joke Camp where my jaw actually dropped. That interview was one of those times. My mouth stayed open as I listened to this dolt carry on about how many dull resumes he sees as boss. There was no apology from this idiot for dragging me all the way across six freeway systems and two mountain ranges in the middle of the day just so he could liven up his drab late morning between the doughnut wagon and lunch.
This actually happened. I’m not making it up. I tried to again commandeer the meeting and take it rightfully back to the talking point of me leaving the ranks of the Government Cheese Eaters and becoming a Wilshire Go-Getter. He just shook his head.
“Nah. I can tell. You wouldn’t work out here.” He shook his head again and laughed. “I gotta run. Got a lunch.”
He shook my hand and started to walk toward the door, which was my signal that I couldn’t live in his office. “Wait ’til I tell my wife about our meeting…”
I was so shocked, I couldn’t come up with any remotely decent exit line. No, “Gosh. Next time, call ahead and I’ll pick up your dry cleaning for you.” Or, “Give me $20 for the gas I wasted driving down here or I’ll kill you.”
On the bright side of this interview, I wasn’t arrested and it was early enough that I didn’t hit much traffic driving the 40 miles back to Newhall.
Many years ago, I was up for a job as Zsa Zsa Gabor’s personal assistant.
Zsa Zsa had made a reputation for being famous for just being famous. She had no talent. Married for money. Word on the street she was pure evil.
I’ve always been pretty much an organizational whiz and, for a small season, I did odd jobs in the entertainment industry, so I could tweak my resume. During that epoch of my life, I was waiting tables at a Ventura Boulevard restaurant during lunches and took home about 35 cents an hour after figuring in gas and depreciation on my Chevy Vega. A friend-of-a-friend got in touch and set up an appointment with me and Miss Gabor.
I had heard horror stories about the woman. Insiders shared she was light years off the Ogre Scale. Friends put on elaborate skits, recreating entire scenes from “Sunset Boulevard” with me, of course, being the William Holden character. One of my best pals, Hank Hinton, just kept shaking his head and repeating, “What an Adam Henry.” Only he didn’t say, “Adam Henry.” He used the seven-letter naughty word people bandy about when talking about extremely difficult people that stands for Capital A-Two Dollar Signs & The Center of a Donut. Hank told me a story from his youth when he parked cars for a tony Beverly Hills jewelry shop.
Zsa Zsa would make it a point to race into the parking lots when she shopped, slam on the brakes, get out, lock the doors and leave her car smack dab in the middle of the drive-way so no one could get in or out.
“What an Adam Henry,” Hank kept repeating.
Still. There are times for all of us when we shrug and rationalize: “A job’s a job. You gotta eat…”
Miss Gabor wanted to see me. I called her direct line from the restaurant during my break to make an appointment. I still marvel about show business. There are people in it who are two-faced, unrelentlessly unpleasant and wouldn’t last a second in the real working world. Everyone, including their public, seems to know they are mean and charmless. Yet, some of these stars not only survive, but thrive for decades in wealth, attention and popularity.
Zsa Zsa tersely interrupted me mid-sentence to ask about my background. She interrupted me again to accuse me of lying and that she could easily check up on me. I physically held the phone away from my head as she shouted to look at it.
“Well. You come over to ze house. I will meet you now,” she said, most impatiently.
Young, dumb me, at that moment, there were several thousand red flags flying in my face. I was a patient soul and figured it might even be fun to be Zsa Zsa’s assistant for a while. Worst thing, I could just take the interview and have several great dinner anecdotes for the years ahead. I said I could be over later that afternoon and Miss Gabor screamed at me.
“You come over. Now!”
Again, I looked at the phone.
I explained that I was working as a waiter at that moment and would be off shift in two hours and that I couldn’t just walk off a job.
Miss Gabor reiterated: “You come over. Now. You obey me.”
I silently mouthed the words, “Obey me?” adding my own question mark.
To this day, some 25 years later, me a glib fellow, I am still stumped as to what I should have said. I remember just laughing. Politely, I said: “I’m afraid, Zsa Zsa, this doesn’t look like it’s going to work out. Good luck with your search. Good day.”
I hung up on Zsa Zsa, which is something most people in the world cannot say.
I’m confident it worked out for the best, not taking that job. I would have probably ended up murdering her.
And you know what usually happens when you murder the boss.
They arrest you.
It’s not right. But it’s the way the world imperfectly works.
John Boston has earned 119 major awards for writing stuff. Besides The Mighty West Ranch Beacon, his work appears in the prestigious thebostonreport.net just about every darn day. His commentaries represent his own opinions and not necessarily the views of any organization he may be affiliated with or those of the West Ranch Beacon. Read Boston’s daily blog, his Daily English Muffins, the Adventures of Job Hunter and more of John Boston’s award-winning commentary on thebostonreport.net