139: Lacteal

I was always told that you should approach interview questions in an assertive, self-assured way, and that if you were ever asked: “where do you see yourself in five years time?”, to say: “sitting in that very chair”, meaning the chair of the person asking the question, insofar as they’re someone high up in the organisation, that is (you wouldn’t say it to someone who was maybe the two-year-old child of the CEO, sitting in a high chair in the board-room, due to some child-care mismanagement). No, this particular response should be reserved for upper management only. But I would always like to take this approach one step further, and before they even had a chance to ask the question, upon entering the interview room, I would immediately seek out the most senior looking member of the interview panel and go straight for their chair, setting myself confidently down upon it. I’d either wedge myself between them and it, trying to prise them out of it, or – if they remained steadfast – I would install myself firmly on their lap and clasp onto the armrests, pushing myself back into the chair with all the force I could muster, crushing its occupant into oblivion. This would invariably get security called, and I would usually leave the interview room, kicking and squealing, grabbing onto pieces of furniture and door frames, trying to claw myself back towards the coveted chair, usually with very little success. But on one occasion, during an interview at Weetabix, the CTO did nothing to resist my intervention. In fact, he was very encouraging, wrapping his arms around my midriff, winding the long locks of my hair around his index finger and whispering in my ear: “Oh, squeeze me onto the scrap heap will you? Tell me more…” So I had to adlib. “I’m sure you’ve been a very productive boy over your tenureship,” I said, “...but in five years, your time will be up!” Then, pointing at the flipchart in the corner of the room, “Just imagine if that flapchart had eyes and ears... all the things it’s spied you doing in here! Yes you’ve been a very productive boy haven’t you, eating all your curds and whey…” And, pointing my finger out towards the mountain scene in the window (really just an inset vitrine housing some papier-mâché mountains): “I suppose you’ve done a fair bit of yodelling in your day? Hot breath against that window pane, yodelling at that mountain, trying to hear the cow bells?” At this point, I could hear the cowbells too. And the sultry wheezing of the CTO transported me to a balmy summer day on the bank of some alpine lake, the Dolomites shimmering in the distant heat, as the cow’s pink face nuzzles at the nape of my neck; fat tongue lapping at my ear lobe… The snarling rosy kaleidoscope of rubbery cow faces blossoming out from the lake to fill the sky; billions of watery eyes squirting in unified lactal hysteria, a thick nutritious mist descending on the boardroom… I’d been microdosing on ethanol to smooth the edges of the situation. Just 5 cubic inches every hour for the last 13 prior to my appointment, but enough to augment the trepidatious interplay of a high-stakes corporate interview. Anyway, it worked, I got the job. And before I knew it, I was in charge the operational overhaul of a flank 13 refrigerated grainhouses stretching from Innsbruck to Brenner. The gnawing of these new responsibilities would often uncover burried episodes from my youth… It’s the winter of 1932. I’ve grazed the tops of my cheeks with the small square of 80-grit sandpaper I keep in the breast pocket of my blazer, and pulled the padded red aviator flaps down hard over my ears. My broad-shouldered sister is pushing me before her into the creamery, the steel tanks glinting menacingly as the ornamental crocheted beret teeters in swooning surety atop her Weimar bob cut. A brusque bovine breeze whistles through the warehouse, resonating the tanks. “Why don’t you eat salad?”, it bellows in a deep metallic moo. I press the aviator flaps over my ears… “uhhhhhnnnnn! The tanks are threatening me with salad again..!” … “Shh!”, my sister retorts, clamping firmly onto my shoulders, “it’s just the wind.” But I wiggle free and bolt from the creamery, staggering only a few yards from the entrance before falling face down in the snow. The salad warning still murmuring in the distance, my terrified tears melting the snow. If those tanks could see me now. I’ll give them salad.