My Strangest Interview, Part I

[Names have been changed to protect the guilty]

So I get a call-back from an online application from Mercury Plasmatics. They’re a local company, family-run for generations, making nuts and bolts stuff you’d normally have no clue who made. You can see their twenty-foot-high neon sign as you drive down the Turnpike. Seems they need a payroll coordinator to help with their 600-employee weekly pay check run.

I did a little research the morning of my interview and got some basics on the company. I also came across a little negative advertising in the form of a comment on a generally-favorable article in the local paper’s online site. More on that, later.

A nice woman name Georgia called me up about two weeks back for a pre-interview. She asked me what payroll systems I was familiar with. She discussed the bare bones of her company: 450 union workers, 100 non-union, both weekly and bi-weekly payrolls. She asked if I could handle “pressure.” I said “yes.” I worked in an auto dealership for 19 years, not exactly the Zen garden of businesses. Then she asked me again, and, later in the call, a third time, if I can handle “pressure.”

Georgia calls me back last Friday to schedule an in-house interview. I agree and set up a time. On Monday she emails me confirmation of the date, time, and their address so I can mapquest it. So far, so good. No warning signs, no flashing lights. I’m mildly interested.

The day of my interview arrives, and it’s a beautiful spring day. No humidity, 70 degrees, sunny, good weather to pull on the old suit. There’s no traffic and I get there with plenty of time to spare.

Mercury Plasmatics is basically a fenced-off couple of acres in a semi-industrial part of the county. I drive around looking for an entrance and finally find one. While doing so I note the barbed-wire, but that’s probably normal. Wouldn’t want trespassers coming on to your property, getting hurt on all the machinery and whatnot laying about, and suing your pants off. I pull into the designated driveway and come to a guardhouse.

I'm immediately greeted by a twenty-something smoking a cigarette. I tell him why I’m here and who I’m here to see. He squints in the distance and tells me to park vaguely “over there” where visitors park, then come back and sign in. I drive about two or three hundred yards past a couple dozen “reserved” spots until I come to visitors parking. I get out, get my jacket on, grab my briefcase, and I’m heading back to the guardhouse, whistling a happy tune of my daughter’s.

Now there’s three twenty-somethings arguing over who took the last cigarette break and who gets the next one. They don’t seem to be wearing any type of uniform except t-shirts and black jeans. I go in and sign a binder and a girl gives me a sticker to put on the lapel of my jacket. She tells me to wait.

Five minutes later Georgia escourts me to the main office, which is close to the guardhouse among this conglomeration of factory buildings and silos and empty 18-wheeler trucks. I’m introduced to Morgana and Drusilla. Morgana would be my boss; Drusilla would be my co-payroll-coordinator. Drusilla’s co-worker is retiring July 1.

Let me describe what has me overwhelmed, mind racing, all while trying to maintain a cool outward equilibrium. First, the office. State of the art ... 1976. Scuffed tile flooring. Water stains on the ceiling panels. A drab yellow-ish green on the walls. Lots of space between ancient file cabinets and fake-wood desks. Giant phones. IN boxes and OUT boxes. It looks a bit like the decor from my public grammar school. The only thing that’s remotely modern are the Dell flatscreens I see on the boss’s desk.

There’s someting thick and heavy overhanging this office, something akin to the cloud that escaped that plant in Bhopal. Both Morgana and Drusilla are overweight and pale. Heavy eye bags. Drusilla has yellow teeth. Morgana is a slow-mover, and conducts the interview entirely from her desk chair. Occassionally she swivels. After introductions, she begins, “Why ... don’t you ... start by telling ... us ... something about ... yourself.”

We spend about ten or fifteen minutes – pleasant ones, I have to admit – discussing my payroll experience, how it fits in with theirs, how I could help them, what new things their thinking of implementing, some of the operational problems they are facing. Then Morgana pauses and sighs and says, “I suppose I should tell you this ...”

She informs me the company filed for Chapter 11 in 2007. (That internet research I did has this as the reason: Mercury Plastmatics is the biggest polluter in the state and declared bankruptcy to avoid paying the EPA fines. But I wasn’t going to bring that up, obviously.) The family sold whatever they could to an out-of-state holding company. Since Morgana has only been there for four years and Drusilla for only two, I deduce that the new owners came in and fired everybody.

“I have to be honest with you,” Morgana continues, “we’ve laid off 250 people over the past two years ... We have lines sitting on the factory floor that we can’t move ... Things are ... really ... month by month around here ... We had an office ... out in St. Louis ... that we just closed ... Our contract with Pep Boys ... may or may not be renewed ... The union contract ... which was supposed to be renegotiated by June 1 ... still hasn’t been ratified ... Six months ago ... a man lost his arm out in the shop ... Payroll was delayed last week ... because of a fire in the factory ... ”

Yikes! Rather than thank them for their time and head the heck outta there, I decide to continue on. Something about gaining experience, etc.

Part II continues tomorrow …