I looked around, desperate to see a trace of disbelief, a hint of cynicism, just one roll of the eyes in the faces around me. Instead saw nothing but beaming, eager expressions, desperate to put in their 2 cents. The group assessor had just played us an example of what the job we were all competing for would entail: calling people, in the privacy of their homes, and attempt to sell them cheaper phone rates – being as aggressive as possible; and we were now to analyse the call under the headings: Communication, Self Control and Influencing.

“Her voice, was just so wonderfully soft but with total clarity at the same time.”
“Yes and the way she immediately introduced that hook, really managing to turn the customer’s negative into a positive, like a master spider drawing in her web.”

All the gushing made me sick – but the assessor lapped it up, laughing at their lame jokes and pathetic appeals to attract her attention. This wasn’t the first group assessment job interview I had attended. My application for %%% – a prominent English fashion label – was arduous at best. First was the on-the-spot phone interview, in which I had to answer questions like

“What does customer service mean to you?”
“What, in your mind, is a typical %%% customer?”

but even more horrifyingly the group assessment involved bringing in an object that I see embodies the label (“be as creative as you want”) and a 5 minute skit to be prepared in our group… which somehow evolved into me playing a lesbian inviting a snobby Swedish couple to share a bed (they come around to the idea.)

Of course none of this compares to the case in which the interviewer, upon seeing that I was Chinese, began telling me how he found certain races much better workers than others – for example the Chinese were very hard working whereas those Caribbean people were so consistently lazy.

I never returned from the break during this latest group assessment. I had no chance of getting the job, didn’t really want it anyway, and fuck it was my birthday – what was I doing spending it at this 3 hour bullshit-fest? I called my roomie C., who had been keen to take me out to dinner for my birthday and told her I could make it after all. We got drunk on cocktails and devoured skewered swordfish and lemon and time tarts. We broke apart boys and built up dreams for the future. Marveled that here we were in London and how far away (yet close to our hearts) Sydney felt. Another birthday passed…