“Tales of a Scorched Coffee Pot” — Chapter 94

In the end, it probably didn’t matter a whole hell of a lot regardless. These interviews were just formalities. Unless knocking it out of the park with wave after wave of mind-blowing revelations, then they have surely just about made up their mind already anyway.

So there are basically two approaches with this. He can either waltz in there having studied and memorized all the standard talking points, though even if doing so to perfection, he would peg his odds of succeeding at about zero. For some reason he has a tremendously difficult time of doing things the “standard” way when he doesn’t actually agree with them. Then again, this is probably common sense, and the way the business world should work, if not the world as a whole. Although some people are admittedly quite gifted at pulling it off.

The second approach, meanwhile, is that he can attack that interview with the things he knows — or at least believes to be — important. The problem with this is that it’s bound to come off a little weird, if he’s talking up points that they don’t expect to hear. And which will probably fail to connect regardless. Still, he considers this the only true angle worth pursuing, one that he wholeheartedly endorses. It also has the added benefit that, in the extreme likelihood that they don’t promote him to president, at least he has aired out these concepts — this could theoretically still set some wheels in motion, and find a home for them anyway.

As the last internal applicant, and with the owners apparently interviewing the candidates in application order, Edgar is therefore the final in-house person to get the call to Bellwether. Up on the second floor offices, which he hasn’t seen since his Accounts Payable days over a year ago, he continues ahead to the conference room in the corner where Rob and Janis, the other Locke daughter, and Carol the Friendly HR rep are already waiting, in four consecutive chairs along the far side. They instruct him to grab a seat across from them, which has already cast this as less than a chummy encounter, something reminiscent of a legal proceeding or maybe even a parole hearing. Right off the bat, Rob asks Edgar why he applied for this job.

“Well, you know, I do believe I would be a good fit for this position,” he says, with a slight chuckle…