Would you like a job?

Everyone knows that it is important to ask a prospective employer questions when you are interviewing. These can be clarifying questions, such as "So, you make widgets here? What exactly is a widget, anyway?" or questions that show you have done your homework on the company and can talk intelligently about any trends you have noticed: "What's up with the higher disciplinary actions here in the last month?" and "Why is Jeffrey Skilling sitting behind the president's desk?"

But the most important questions are the ones you never ask. They just sit in your brain, although at times they threaten to burst out at inappropriate moments. This happened to me recently when I was interviewing for a staff position as an editor.

First they throw out bajillions of facts at me. This particular company has been around for a hundred years, and they proceed to give me a detailed history. After hearing about the various incarnations of their homeschooling curriculum, how many students they have served in the last century, how many different buildings they have occupied, and how many former students have gone on to be contributing members of society by making widgets, I have many questions, particularly...

Where's the bathroom??

They tell me that many of the staff members here are former teachers, so the environment is very warm, caring, supportive, fuzzy, etc. And I wonder...

Do we get milk and cookies at 3:00? And naps afterward?

I am shuffled from one office to another, deposited with the next person or persons to interview with, collecting stuff along the way: a glass of water, a benefits folder from Human Resources, a thick stack of manuscript pages showing what the work would come to me looking like. One interviewer looks at the pages and says, "They gave you work already?"

Yes. It's due yesterday.

I further learn that no one goes by their real name here. Anika is known as Nikki. Michelle, who is straining to talk with a laryngitis-diminished voice, was the third Michelle to be hired, so she goes by Mick. She no more looks like a Mick than I look like a Jeremiah. And it makes me think...

Will I, too, if I am offered employment, be required to take another name? And will I have any say in what this name is? Can I be called Princess, for instance?

Eileen (whose real name, as far as I know, is Eileen, and who may be the only one called by her real name), has been here for 3 months. She is impressed, she says, by the little things the company does. (And at a nonprofit, sometimes the little things are all you have.) Milk in the fridge in case you didn't get a chance to eat your breakfast at home. Hot water for tea. An offsite holiday party. In surprise, I think...

You mean you don't have potluck holiday parties, where all the staff have to contribute something?

This is the kind of party hosted by the kind of company I'm used to working for.

By the time I leave, there is hardly anyone left in the building. I never do get any cookies, a nap, or even a trip to the bathroom, but nevertheless it has been a successful interview. At least everyone called me by my real name.