See you at six!

The sound my footsteps made had started drowning me. The steady fast-paced "tap-tap-tap", the unending gravel path in front of me, the scorching sun - which had just created a droplet of sweat on my temple. It was all asphyxiating.

I unlocked my phone and squinted my eyes to see the screen, which served me with a "06:23" in a bold letters. Or, well, bold numbers. Beneath that, two notifications floated. One was a text from my sister, just a simple "Don't screw it up tomorrow", lovely stuff, made my heart flourish. The other notification, was actually much more supportive, it read "You now have full lives! Tap here to continue your Saga". Candy Crush had almost moved me to tears. Maybe, if I hadn't been 23 minutes late, I'd stop for a game.

I threw my phone in the bag I had over my shoulder and kept furiously walking, as fast as I could.

What excuse am I even going to give?

The plan was to make nothing but a perfect first impression. My sister had referred me, so I had to live up to the man, the legend, she made me out to be. But I do find it would be much more appropriate for them to hire real people, with real flaws and real struggles. Waking up at 5:00am -for heaven's sake- is a very real struggle.

And that would actually be a perfect response to the question "name a flaw you believe you have". Heck, I didn't even have to prepare for this and I feel like I'm already acing it. Well, except for the being late part. But I did now have an excuse to go in, tip my hat and exclaim "Excuse my tardiness!" to a room of executives, or whoever, and leave them all baffled by my professionalism.

As my ego had been, almost, adequately stroked, I arrived at the grey, lifeless building. It was as grey and as lifeless as I expected it to be. As grey and lifeless you'd expect an insurance company to be. Definitely not my favourite place to be, but if I wanted to make a living without having to scrape pieces of gum from the bottom of a bar, then I guess I'd have to get grey-er and lifeless-er.

I quickly got in, and the first thing I noticed was that there were no executives (or whoever) in sight. I guess it was bold of me to assume there would be a circle of people waiting for me in silence. In their defence, they could have been waiting for me like that and given up after the twenty minute mark. Then maybe they just went home, or something.

The air conditioning inside was hitting me right on my chest, making it clear to me that I had wet spots under my armpits. The cold sensation of the breeze onto the wet cloth made my pores rise, making my arms look like the skin of a chicken. The goosebumps spread across my body and I made a dancey, quaky motion to shake them off.

As I shook my goosebumps off, a voice echoed in the room from my right, where I just noticed there was a desk with a young woman sitting behind it.

"Um, sir? Do you need any help?"

She sounded very concerned, I'm not sure why. I might have frightened her with my extreme reaction to being cold, but, honestly, the flow of my moves is pretty sick.

"Morning Ma'am. Or should I say Madam?" I let out a little chuckle but she didn't react, so I went on.

"Miss?"

No reaction.

"Lady?"

Nothing.

"Girl?"

Tough crowd.

"My name is Peter. I am here for an interview."

She blinked. "Sir, we have no interviews scheduled right now."

"Well I am a bit late... Oh! Right!", I tipped my hat, "Excuse my tardiness! Damn, I should've done that ages ago."

She paused and looked at me with her mouth open, just a bit, and her eyes wide. She blinked twice.

"Sir, it is 6 in the morning. No one is interviewed this early in the morning. Who did you speak with?"

I scratched my upper arm. "I spoke with mister Anderson, I think? Yesterday. He told me we'd talk tomorrow at six."

She blinked four times before she spoke.

"Sir. He told you to be here at six. And you came here at six... in the morning."

The realisation started sinking in when she put it like that. I mean, to be fair, he never did specify.

"Well, either way, I came a long way, is there anyone I could talk to right now? I'm Liz's brother, well you probably know her as Elizabeth, or, what, miss Court, or something."

Her mouth opened a bit wider and she blinked many more times before she spoke again.

"Sir. You are miss Elizabeth's brother. You told us you lived abroad. We had you scheduled for an online meeting. We even sent you an email with the details of your conference. Didn't you know your sister works online? Hell, the job you would be applying for is remote, why would your interview be here? Sir, is this, any of this, a joke?"

Oops! Forgot the lie.

Well, to be fair, I have to manually refresh my emails every time I check them, and it's not like it's a lot of work, it's just that it is work, so I chose about a year ago to never do it again and just live with the risk of not getting emails. Of course, I couldn't admit that to this very confused lady who kept blinking at me, so I just said that I was indeed joking.

"I guess I'll see you at six! No clarification! Just six!", I said while slowly making steps backwards.

I made finger guns and shot at her while making pew-pew sounds with my mouth. Her expression remained confused as I exited. I pointed at her and shouted "You da best!" when I reached the door. It didn't cheer her up much. So I just left.

On my way home I stopped by the nearest convenience store, grabbed the largest packet of popsicles I could find - it was 24 pieces, family pack - and unlocked my phone to construct a beautiful text for my sister;

Hey, sorry, not gonna do it. Made a fool outta myself. Gonna have popsicle marathon and cry.

Luv ya x