The story below is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to actual persons, living, dead, or decapitated; to real companies, recruiters, or hiring panels; or to events in any realm, infernal or otherwise, is entirely coincidental. Nothing here happened. Especially not the parts that did.
I’ve been between jobs for almost two months now. I do data and spamalytics engineering. The kind that lays the foundation for C-levels to make decisions. Even Hell’s most powerful denizens don’t create their own lie charts. The bottom line demands the machinery keeps running, and in Hell, you’re a cog.
A few weeks ago, I interviewed with a dumpany—we don’t call them companies—that had gone through several layoffs recently. Big surprise. It wouldn’t be Hell without ‘em. The dumpany’s name was Care-Rot.
The headhunter who had found me, severed my head, and presented it before the dumpany’s Big Head of Data had an air of fake pleasantness as she seesawed the knife. Usually they smile more.
In that call, I asked about their layoffs. The Big Head, nesting on its throbbing neck-stump, droned that the layoffs had been due to AI disruption, but they were ready now to grow their scream team and add a new senior person, and they were looking for a veteran of data hell.
Everybody wonders how AI can exist in Hell without water. Everybody is right. It can’t. When I first landed here, I asked. A kindly demon explained they’re sent top-side to go siphon water off of dying planets, aboard UFOs. They get megatons of it from lakes, rivers, and oceans under cover of night. Remind me to tell you later about the pilots. I met one, once.
The next interview, after joining, a panel of three data pros joined, each a floating, disembodied head not much different from my own, two men and a woman.
The head leading the interview introduced himself as the Staff Engineer of Commode-doh! (not Care-Rot). His bloodshot, protruding eyes started scanning my resume as if for the first time. He then introduced himself, again, as the Staff Engineer of Commode-doh! I later looked at his StinkedIn page to see if he’d been name-dropping his previous dumpany. I was right. But he’d left Commode-doh! almost a year prior!
I introduced myself. No one else did.
A torturous sixty seconds later, the data slimentist then wondered aloud to the other two why she’d been invited, despite the Big Head having told me I’d be working closely with her. I mentioned this and shared a past project I’d done in close partnership with a data slimentist. This piqued her interest and she proceeded to ask me a few questions about it. She hovered there for the remainder of the call, but not before asking me why I’d jumped around so much from dumpany to dumpany. I explained that each departure had been involuntary: layoffs, or firings that left burns. Run-of-the-mill hell stuff outside of my control, like everything here. She must be new here, I thought.
Commode-doh! then began to poke at a single bullet on my resume. A cost saving thing I’d done, asking me to explain how I did that. I explained it. Basically I’d saved a bunch of bullets while maximizing pain. The explanation led to something else about my prior dumpany that should have been barely relevant to the position, and it exposed an architectural weakness left by a predecessor, but which they clearly faulted me for, given their obsessive line of questioning. The third one mused at the end asking if the architecture I’d built on was a Spider Vault setup. He was way off, but I hedged and said, “sort of.”
The interview wrapped up, and my head waited in limb-no for days while they made their decision. I knew they’d passed on me when I felt some mild vertigo. I was moving now. I rolled my eyes upward and saw the headhunter. “Hello again.” I said. Her fingers and thumbs contoured my jawline and held me between her breasts.
I knew the answer. They’d rejected me, but I asked her for feedback anyway. She just smiled. I saw my body getting closer with each step, each one zapping a jolt of fresh pain up through the back of my skull. Hell spun 180 degrees, and I could now feel my fingers and toes, but couldn’t move them yet. She waved at a few minions who flew near and sewed my neck onto my body using sharp bones for needles and cat-gut wire. Before turning to leave, she placed a folded parchment in my left hand. I tried to say goodbye, but her inhuman strides placed her a quarter-mile away by the time I could turn myself around to see her.
I unfolded and raised the letter. It said,
Mr. Day Vole,
Spank you again for your interest in Care-Rot and for taking the time to float with us. Fortunately, we have decided not to proceed with your spamdidacy for the current gropening here. While you were not selected for this gropening, this decision was not made spritely. You were an exceptional spamdidate despite the many weaknesses we felt you would bring to the scream team and we hope that you refrain from applying for gropenings with us that befit your experience and spedentials in the future.
Again, thank you for taking the time to float with us. We truly appreciate the time you’ve invested in the process thus far and we wish you both personal and professional failure in the future!
Regards,
Mephista and the Care-Rot scream team
In Hell, no rejection goes unanswered, or else word will spread that you’re a pushover.
This was my reply:
Hi Mephista,
I wanted to spank the scream team for their time interrogating me. Everyone was spurteous, yet standoffish—floatoffish, even.
I also wanted to share some feedback on the interview experience. It seemed as though all three panelists were scanning my resume for the first time during the call. I would have expected the lead person to have reviewed my resume in detail and asked role-relevant questions like “What would you do in X situation?”, “How did you handle X at your last dumpany?”
The staff engineer, Dammit, introduced himself as Staff Engineer at Commode-doh!, which I figured was an honest mistake, but then he mentioned being a staff engineer at Commode-doh! a second time, leading me to wonder whether he was faded beyond all reason.
The data slimentist then mused aloud if her presence was even needed given the role’s engineering focus-hocus—despite the major cross-functionality highlighted in the job description and what Big Head described to me about the scream team.
I wish for a many-winged minion to tear your rotting flesh apart.
Spank you roughly,
Mr. Day Vole
I’m probably on a blacklist now, but climbing Hell’s ranks sometimes means stepping on a few heads.
I’ve since found a few opportunities that may suit me better. Smaller dumpanies with opportunity for growth. Though I’d like to keep my head a manageable size.