Don’t Save the Cheater

This story is a precursor to The Hollywood Intern series.

All week I was running around going to different interviews for different Journalism, new media, and marketing related internships. I really thought I had experienced it all until my group interview for a popular small-scaled new media company. I had left way too early for the interview on purpose, just in case I got lost, and I’m so glad I did because when I finally found the building that I needed to get to I ran into three other lost young adults in jeans and T-shirts.

“Are you guys here for the—” I said before getting cut off by one of the confused young people.

“—yeah but we can’t find which room or what floor were supposed to go to.”

I ended up calling the interviewer’s phone and got the answering machine when the friendly doorman called some other confused individuals for us and told our small group to try a room on the third floor.

“Oh God this is difficult. Ha-ha, it must be part of the interview,” I said as we all huddled into the elevator. When we did finally make it up there, the cluster of potential interns that I had collected ran into the other half of the interviewing group in the waiting room.

“Oh you guys are interviewing for the—” a young hipster looking girl said to our huddle of somewhat relieved interviewees.

“—Yes, we got a little lost coming into the building though,” I answered.

“Hi! I’m [her name is now ‘Contributing to Society’] what are all of your names?!” ‘Contributing to Society’ said to the nervous young folk.

We went around the rooms introducing ourselves to the loud young girl with a lot of questions and pretty much instantly got to find out about everyone’s lives and personalities.

“Okay you guys. You can have a seat in this room right here and she will be right with you,” the receptionist lady said to us. We all filed into the smaller conference room with a long table that filled most of the space inside the smaller room.

“Oh how fancy,” I said as I was about to accidentally bump my pelvic region into the interesting looking business table. We all sat down and continued sharing our stories until the boss’s assistant came in with a currently hired intern and greeted us. She spoke about the position, what it would entail, and ya-di-ya-di-ya-dah, and then the interview took a thought-provoking turn into a group exercise.

The interviewer laid pictures of fictional characters with descriptions on the bottom of the sheets, and told us we had 20 minutes to figure out who would get out of this fictional flooding spelunking cave and in what order. Apparently a few of the fictional characters weren’t going to make it either.

Immediately the group went into a bit of frenzy about the characters and who was worthy enough to get out.  I started shouting out my opinions for a minute or two before I stopped and actually started listening to what the others were saying.

“This lady doesn’t need to leave because she won’t contribute that much to society as this guy with the Youth Group over here, and plus she’s cheating on her husband with the tour leader.”

The group had followed the lead of ‘Contributing to Society’ and agreed that the Youth Group leader should go first and all the evil doers would just die. I felt a little worried for society as these random representations of my generation was happily killing off people because they had cheated in the past.

“Hey, she has kids back at home, and you shouldn’t kill her off just because of what she did in the past,” I yelled to ‘Contributing to Society.’”

“Yeah, but she’s not going to contribute that much to society. She’s a cheater.”

“WOW. WOW.”

The two of us went back and forth about the issues while some of the other group members started to see it my way. I guess ‘Contributing to Society’ got a little frustrated with me when she just started to argue her point a little louder.

I had to pause for a moment. “These are living human beings we’re talking about, not dead bodies.” I made the case that the Youth Leader would want his delinquent son out of the cave before he exited, because it was his son and he loved him, and spoke about why we should look at it from the views of the characters that we were working with. I made some random argument involving cats and The Hunger Games, as anyone else should do during a rescue mission, and then I let ‘Contributing to Society’ respond to my argument.

“Okay, who wants to vote? Is this good? Yes?” ‘Contributing to Society’ said.

“Sure, why not. I guess it’s fine,” the other exhausted group members said as they just agreed to disagree. The interviewer gathered up the pictures and told us we would find out tomorrow if we had received the position, and as I left the small conference room bumping my pelvis on the chairs while making my way out, I couldn’t help but think about ‘Contributing to Society’ and how she was thinking about the situation. She was a young, intelligent, and very nice (yet boisterous) girl and she was about to kill people for their crimes without a jury inside of a spelunking cave.

As I think about it now, maybe it was right for ‘Contributing to Society’ to think that way. She was probably just trying to be a strong leader while I was carrying on with my hippie, no-shoes-wearing, and bleeding heart ways. Was I right to consider what the people were thinking about, or should I have just thought about who would contribute to society the most once they were saved?

Anywho, I apologize to ‘Contributing to Society’ for yelling at her. I only reserve that side of me for arguments I’m passionate about such as this.