{"id":1004,"date":"2012-10-29T14:38:02","date_gmt":"2012-10-29T13:38:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/?p=1004"},"modified":"2012-11-01T13:57:10","modified_gmt":"2012-11-01T12:57:10","slug":"pohovor-z-pekla-job-interview-from-hell","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/?p=1004","title":{"rendered":"Pohovor Z Pekla! (Job Interview from Hell!)"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Look<\/a>The Russian sitting across from me is an anomaly of the human form and yet a normal occurrence in the land of Russian women. She is approximately six feet tall, with blonde hair, a Barbie Doll frame and the cobalt blue eyes of a KGB \u201cinformation gathering expert.\u201d<\/p>\n

Her name is something I have either forgotten or never understood in the first place. We are involved in a role play in which she is interviewing me for position of translator. I want this job badly.<\/p>\n

My weekly Czech lessons are somewhat indicative of what it is to be a language teacher. There are 24 people on the list \u2013 mostly Russians, a few Vietnamese, a Kazakh, two Germans and me. Of those 24 people, two people show up every week: me and one random Russian Goddess. Interestingly, the Russian Goddess who arrives each week is never the same girl. It\u2019s as though they are sent from a vault hidden beneath the university meant to distract me from my studies or reward me for arriving every week.<\/p>\n

As I sit across from this one, translating her questions, it occurs to me that I still can\u2019t figure out whether it is punishment or reward. My eyes actively search for her face. The interview continues.<\/p>\n

After a few questions about my education and qualifications, answered with ease and yawns, I decide that a little more spice can be thrown into this interview. So this is what happens.<\/p>\n

Me: \u201eJak se jmenuje tvuj pes?\u201c What is your dog\u2019s name?<\/em><\/p>\n

Russian Goddess: \u201ePes?\u201c Dog?<\/em><\/p>\n

Me: \u201eModr\u00e1 pes na gau\u010d.\u201c The blue dog on the couch. <\/em><\/p>\n

RG: (Turns to the imaginary couch) \u201e Pes je moje. Tak, pro\u010d \u0161el jste do Kanady?\u201c The dog is mine. So, why did you go to Canada? <\/em><\/p>\n

Me: \u201eCo nej\u00ed?\u201d What does he eat?<\/em><\/p>\n

RG: \u201eJidlo pro psy.\u201d Dog food.<\/em> \u201ePro\u010d \u0161el jste do Kanady?\u201c Why did you go to Canada?<\/em><\/p>\n

Me: \u201eByl jsem agentem a…prostitut.\u201c I was a spy and…a prostitute.<\/em><\/p>\n

RG: \u201eByl jsi agentem? Nechceme agentem tady!\u201d You were a spy? We don\u2019t want a spy here!<\/em><\/p>\n

Me: \u201eTak, byl jsem taky prostitut a m\u016f\u017eu…napsat na\u2026po\u010d\u00edta\u010d.\u201d Well, I was also a prostitute and I can…write on the computer (I lack the word \u2018type\u2019.)<\/em><\/p>\n

It\u2019s fair to say at this point that the Russian Goddess is onto my momentary shenanigans and decides to play along. The teacher is taking notes. I can not read his thoughts on the direction that the interview has taken.<\/p>\n

RG: (Tossing her pen on the table) <\/em>\u201eA<\/em> jste studoval, \u017ee kdy byl jsi prostitute?\u201d And did you learn that when you were a prostitute?<\/em><\/p>\n

Me: \u201eUr\u010dit\u011b ne!\u201d Of course not!<\/em><\/p>\n

RG: \u201eJste m\u011bl zubn\u00ed poji\u0161t\u011bn\u00ed?\u201d Did you have dental insurance?<\/em><\/p>\n

Me: \u201eNe. To je pro\u010d jsem \u0161el.\u201d No. It\u2019s why I left.<\/em><\/p>\n

RG: \u201eNem\u016f\u017eu ti dat prace. Ale, M\u016f\u017eu ti dat modr\u00e1 pes.\u201c I can\u2019t give you a job, but I can give you a blue dog. <\/em><\/p>\n

The teacher stops us there and asks us if I have been successful. The Russian Goddess tells him in broken, yet great detail how I was not the kind of person the translation company is looking for. I hang my head in shame. She consoles me by reminding me that I have a new blue dog that eats dog food. Still, there is an odor of shame in the classroom now.<\/p>\n

The class ends and I go off to my office to pet and feed my imaginary blue dog. Russian Goddess runway walks out of the classroom, surely on her way back to the vault, which I have got to find one of these days.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Russian sitting across from me is an anomaly of the human form and yet a normal occurrence in the land of Russian women. She is approximately six feet tall, with blonde hair, a Barbie Doll frame and the cobalt blue eyes of a KGB \u201cinformation gathering expert.\u201d Her name is something I have either […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1004","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1EvEu-gc","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1004","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1004"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1004\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1020,"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1004\/revisions\/1020"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1004"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1004"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1004"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}