My doomed Interview at the San Francisco Chronicle: “There was no way in hell I was getting hired."

My dream of working there was dashed, but I still buy copies of the Chron!

Below is what I wrote in my journal after interviewing for a job at the San Francisco Chronicle, a newspaper I grew up reading and admiring, on a day that turned out to be one of the most stressful possible for the people working there:

Friday, March 17, 2000

I went for my big Chronicle interview today. I decided that the most important thing was to be positive, to radiate enthusiasm, calm happiness - to find an inner peace and spill it over to that. I just went in with a “what-the-hell-I’ve-got-nothing-to-lose” attitude, and decided to just be as nice as possible.

On the ferry ride over I heard that the Examiner was sold and the office seemed in a tizzy. SL was a bit late meeting with me, then when I went in and talked to LG she asked me if I had been listening to the radio about the sale. She told me that this position might not still be open, they still might not be able to hire for it. It still didn’t hit me.

I filled out paperwork, met with the three editors of the Fridays section: an older woman in charge, a younger woman who had worked at the Times-Herald, and young, hip guy. They were distracted, rushed, only talked to me for a half and hour. I thought I did very well; didn’t think enough about the sections, got grilled about story ideas and such, but all in all I felt good.

Then I watched the news, heard that who bought the Examiner was going to hire all new employees, and that the staff of the Examiner and Chronicle were merging. F--K. There was no way in hell I was going to be hired. How idiotic it must have seemed. They were interviewing me while probably thinking, “What the hell is going to happen to my job?” Damn.

I was instantly sad, my bubble burst. F--k. What the hell am I going to do? What have I done? [I had quit my first newspaper job a few weeks earlier before landing another one!]

But hey, our toilet is fixed. Don [our landlord] had come, looked at the toilet, gone to the hardware store to get a part. Chris said Don’s dad had come over, told him what the problem was but Don said no, he knew what it was. Turns out the old man was right.

Don came back, first with the wrong size of the wrong part, then back again with the right size of the wrong part, out it in, “It’s not stopping.”

He said his dad was a plumber for 51 years. Hmmmm...

Finally, his dad comes over, can barely walk anymore, hovers over the toilet, straddles it, fiddles around, and the toilet works. Stops running. “Third time’s the charm, they say.”

He won back a little pride that day, I’d say.

Postscript: The following week I got a job at a magazine in Berkeley, which was a good fit, but that summer I ended up moving to Seattle to reboot my life. 

Looking back, I can’t believe how crazy it was to leave everything I knew in California, including my future husband, and start a new life in Seattle, where I knew absolutely no one, did not have a job and had barely gotten an apartment the week prior. 

But that crazy leap has proven to be by far the best decision I have ever made for myself, and I likely never would have taken it had I gotten the job at the Chron.

So yes, that doomed interview? That was cool.

Read my February entries here.