I avoided restaurants on my search, although I heard they had some of the best chances of getting hired. They all seemed too Danish for me to get hired. I was scared off by signs I couldn't understand. I avoided many retailers for the same reason. Anything that looked at all authentically Danish was immediately crossed off my list because there is no way I could function if even one customer attempts to interact with me in his native language.
So, I ended up handing in applications largely to retail chains like Urban Outfitters who weren't hiring or probably won't hire me because I listed no relevant experience on my resume. The most promising lead I had was at Abercrombie and Fitch, where I felt self conscience even stepping foot in the door. I walked past the shirtless doorman whose Spartan abdominal muscles made me rethink my qualifications for the notoriously superficial job.
When I offered a copy of my resume to one of the beautiful employees, she directed me to a crevice in the wall upstairs where I was forced to complete a long winded application on a mouseless computer while standing up. A girl folding clothes next to me told me they had an opening on the overnight shift, so I allowed myself a bit of optimism while drudging through the application, inventing any information I couldn't remember or couldn't be bothered to retrieve.
What was nice about the Abercrombie application is that everyone who applied automatically gets an interview. They hold the group interviews for times a week and I had mine today. The session was supposed to begin at two in the afternoon. When I got there a couple minutes early another beautiful employee directed me to the bottom floor, where I found three bored looking twenty-somethings taking up the furniture.
I silently contented myself with browsing the stock. Not one item there went below the hundred dollar mark save a pair of sixty-dollar thong sandals. There were probably less than twenty items stocked in the area, and I had paced through the sparse selection twice before a woman with a clip board walked down the stairs toward the sitting area and instructed us to take a seat.
My competition was an Eastern European girl, a couple of Brazilian soccer players, a shy Slaavic guy, and a Pakistani who said his favorite sport was cricket. As far as looks went, I was confident that I was closer to company standards than the other males, but I'm not sure how the assistant manager interviewing us took to my ball-busting skinny jeans and crew neck sweatshirt. I forgot the preppy vibe the store has and went in full-out hipster garb.
I thought the interview went OK, although if I get called back I'll think of it as a miracle tantamount to finding the bike that was stolen from me six months ago in bed with me tomorrow morning. The girl interviewing us made a couple of examples illustrating work procedures saying things like "If we hired you as a model..." It wasn't much, but it was a hopeful hint.
I'm never really sure how to act in interviews, so I usually think I'm doing it wrong. In this case whenever the interviewer posed a question, I answered in the fewest words I thought would make me sound like a good candidate. I was attempting to be professional. But I think I would have been better off shmoozing in every answer like the Brazilians, who talked about the friend they had who already worked at the store. "Oh my god I love him," said the interviewer.
She was from Chicago, and told me her parents lived in St. Paul. I could have related to her on those terms, perhaps even made her like me. Alas, brevity prevailed, and I think my interview suffered because of it. I really need to get this shmoozing thing.
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