Confessions of a Serial Interviewer by Steven Ra Ga

During my younger years, finding work in the city I was born in was difficult, since I didn’t have a 4 yr degree it was next to impossible to convince someone to hire you for anything other than labour.

I found a job as the lot attendant for Subaru.

There were two other gentlemen in my department who’s job it was to wash the cars.

My job was to drive customers to and from the dealership, occasionally I could wash a car or park it.

It was a tough job, you were always on the go, you could never stop, I recall many times I would sit down for lunch and my Scottish manager would bark at me to go and get a customer. It was like in star trek every time the crew was about to eat they would be called away for a red alert.

Eventually I started leaving the shop for lunch, mainly to get away. I had 30mins, which really isn’t enough time to gather your lunch, eat it and return to your work. Most days you spend 20mins gathering, 15 mins to walk back and somewhere in that eat your lunch.

For me being as efficient as possible it was 7/11 convince store hotdogs. Now in Japan convince stores are like 5 star restaurants. In Canada they are like -3 star.

I would order a hot dog, sometimes two, then walk back to work.

(Keep in mind years later I discovered I have C-IBS and a gluten intolerance.)

I ate hotdogs everyday at lunch for a month.

Then I recall one shift I was in the garage bay taking the trash out and suddenly projectile vomiting like acid all over one the cars.

I realized I had been poisoning my body for a month.

My Scottish manager wasn’t the nicest, it was always yelling at me to work harder and faster. Never could I have a break. So I started to resent him and ultimately I quit.

Years last I joined the Freemasons and met a man who worked high up in the car dealership enterprise. I told him the story and he said something to the tune of “Oh, that guy, we got rid of him some time ago.” How comforting it wasn’t just me he was a duck too.