Dangling

Greg sat in the chair that was placed a good distance from Tara’s desk. He thought her face looked pretty but also confident. He was already very nervous and this woman intimidated him. She was 28-years-old and was younger than anyone that had interviewed him in the past but she looked confident and powerful.

Greg was 23-years-old and applying for the biggest job of his life so far with Tara. She wore a blue button-up sports coat over a blue dress that went down to her knees. Based on where he was sitting he could see under her desk. He watched her cross her right leg over her left leg. He looked curiously as her blue shoe, a high-heel, started dangling off of her foot and she was just holding it on there with her toes. She wasn’t wearing any pantyhose, socks, or anything so her legs as well as her size 7 feet were completely bare except for the dress and the shoes, one of them of which was halfway off. 

“So,” she said confidently which got his attention to look her right in her pretty eyes. “I think we can get right down to business here. Tell me about your background.”

She looked at him with a fierce look like she was going to judge him harshly for whatever his answer was so he better answer the question well. He knew he should be looking her in the eyes when he was speaking to her but she was making him too nervous for him to get a word out. So he looked down with his eyes underneath her desk. 

He watched her shoe dangling from her soft foot and he watched her rock her foot back and forth like she was playing a game with the shoe, trying to keep it on there. There was something about watching her do this which he found peaceful and calming so he began answering her question while still looking down in that direction. He figured it wouldn’t look out of the ordinary and would just look like he was thinking of what he wanted to say. It wasn’t like he was looking at her chest or anything.

So he continued to talk about his background and felt more comfortable as the words were coming out. Occasionally he’d look up at her eyes to at least have some eye-contact. When he did, she looked less intimidating, now with a bit of a sweet smile on her face like she was interested in what he was saying. Figuring it was helping him, he kept looking down at her dangling shoe while he finished answering the question.

“OK,” she said when he was done and her tone made it impossible to read whether she liked his answer or not. She did write some things down before looking him right back in the eyes. “So why is it that you are interested in this job?”

He looked back down under her desk again as he began his next answer. As he responded he watched her playing around with her shoe some more. It looked looser on her foot and looked like it could potentially fall off. She did a good job saving it a few times but he wondered how many times she’d be able to do that. 

His response was a long one so he briefly looked up at her to make some more eye-contact. She seemed pleased and not bothered that he wasn’t looking at her much so he went back to looking down. She was now holding onto the shoe with just her big toe, her other little toes just hanging free and no longer part of the group effort to keep her shoe on. He finished up his response then looked back up at her.

“Now tell me about a time in the past when you disagreed with your supervisor and how you handled it,” she said.

He started giving her his response but his eyes went right back down to her shoe. He was too curious to see if she was going to be able to keep control of it with just her big toe. It was really dangling now and her bare heel was swaying back and forth. He didn’t think there was any way she could keep that shoe from falling to the ground with just her one toe much longer.

It looked like it was about to fall and her big toe did her best to bend the way it needed to in order to keep control of the shoe but it feel off her foot and hit the carpeted floor. He watched her bare foot move down and try to fit its way back into the shoe. Without help from her other foot or any of the rest of her body, it was having a tough time getting in. It kept trying to fit in but either it couldn’t get the right angle or the shoe would fall on its side so she’d have to start all over. He wanted to get down on his knees himself and help her.

He watched as she tried a couple of more times to get her foot in the shoe but when she wasn’t able to, she used the side of her foot to just push the shoe aside like she had given up. Now he looked as she had both of the bottoms of her feet touching the floor but one had her shoe still on and the other foot was bare.

How was she going to balance out this asymmetry? He thought she had asked him another question and it sounded like the words were coming out of his mouth to answer it. He had prepared his answers for most of the questions she could have asked him so they were just coming out without him really noticing, and his attention was far more concentrated on what was going on under the desk. 

She took her bare foot and used the toes of that foot to pull on the back heel of her left shoe that was still on and pull it off. It was taking a bit of work and she wasn’t able to do it right away. He wondered if that foot alone would be able to accomplish such a task. But after a bit more work, her toes managed to get the other shoe off of her foot.

She kicked her left shoe aside to the same area her right shoe was. She planted both of her soles on the floor and now her feet were sitting there completely bare. They looked extremely soft. He noticed that she was wearing blue toenail polish that matched the sports jacket she was wearing exactly. He wondered if she had put that nail polish on just that morning specifically to match that jacket. He also wondered if she had applied the nail polish herself or if someone else had done it for her, perhaps at a salon or something. 

He watched her wiggle her toes around a little bit. Her feet seemed to be so happy to be free from those shoes that looked so tight. He had answered a couple more of her questions in the time that she had gotten her other shoe off, only briefly looking away from underneath her desk. Now he looked up at her and when they made eye-contact again there seemed to be a satisfaction between the two of them. She seemed satisfied that her feet were finally free and he seemed so hypnotized by them that he was more calm and relaxed than he had ever felt in an interview before.

“So tell me why you are the best candidate for this position,” she said to him.

He began to respond then he looked down at her feet again. Her toes were still wiggling around. He briefly looked at her shoes and thought about how much it must hurt her feet to be stuck in those shoes all day. He also thought about how hard it must be to balance herself on those heels. He was clumsy sometimes just walking around in regular shoes and he felt a respect for her that she had to worry about everything else that she had to worry about yet was still able to balance herself on those heels. He also thought that her legs had to be at least fairly strong to walk in those heels and that impressed him as well. As he finished up giving her what he thought was a great explanation of why he was the best for the job, he wondered if he should add that he’d be willing to rub her feet for her. After all, it was best to distinguish yourself and he thought surely that would be a way to show he had a quality that the other candidates didn’t. 

“So you did a good interview,” she said to him and he looked up at her in the eyes with the two of them making solid eye-contact again like they had developed a good rapport. Then she asked – “But why were you looking at my feet so much?”