The Trash Can Resume

Denise Colton held my resume between two fingers, carried it past six waiting candidates, and dropped it into the lobby trash can without looking at me twice.

"Next," she said, already turning toward the row of chairs behind me.

I stayed seated. My badge sat flat against my navy blazer, a small red rectangle beside a row of blue ones. Nobody else in that lobby seemed to notice mine said BOARD OFFICE instead of CANDIDATE. Denise certainly hadn't.

"I'm still scheduled for nine thirty," I said.

"That slot's been reassigned." She didn't check a clipboard or a screen. She just said it, the way people say things they have already decided are true. "We had a stronger fit come in this morning."

The stronger fit was a young man in a fitted gray suit standing near the elevator bank, hands in his pockets, watching Denise the way a nephew watches an aunt who is about to solve a problem for him. He hadn't filled out a sign-in sheet. He hadn't waited in a chair. Eleven minutes ago he had walked straight in and gone to the water cooler without asking anyone where it was.

I could have told Denise who I was right then. I could have stood up, said my actual title out loud, and watched her face do something interesting. Instead I crossed my legs, folded my hands, and let her enjoy this a little longer. The board hadn't sent me in to win an argument in a lobby. They had sent me in to watch what Denise Colton did when she thought nobody who mattered was looking.

"You're welcome to reapply next quarter," Denise said, already walking away, "once you've had time to work on your presentation."

A woman two chairs down glanced at my flats, my thrifted blouse, and looked quickly back at her phone. Nobody said anything. The front-desk temp, a young man with a laminated badge and a nervous mouth, watched the whole exchange with his hand frozen over his keyboard.

Denise reached the young man in the gray suit and put a hand on his shoulder, steering him toward the elevator. She had been waiting for him all morning.

"Tyler," she said, warm now, a different voice entirely. "Let's get you upstairs."

I opened the folder on my lap and made a note in careful block letters: interview reassigned to Tyler Colton, 9:11 a.m., no application on file. Then I closed the folder, sat back, and waited to see how long it would take someone in this building to ask me a single real question.