We'll Hedge Them Off at the Pass

I prepared for the interview at the hedge fund the same way I would for any interview. I went to their website, and I read all the press on the company. But after I did all this, I felt even less prepared than before, and a good deal more intimidated.

The Recruiter told me that the company did some film financing, but I could find no evidence of this on the website. However, the verbiage on the website was so impenetrable to me that perhaps, I thought, they could be talking about film financing.

I did understand a few things. For example, that these people appeared to know what they were doing. The press made clear that this was a very successful company, and they had at least one famous guy working for them. Some kind of stock savant. And they were one of very few hedge funds which had managed to make tons of money in the recent and ongoing economic meltdown.

I also got that a hedge fund is sort of like a back-up plan. It’s the investment you make in case all your other investments go belly up. Which seems to me sort of like placing two opposing bets at the same time, and therefore somewhat unfair. Or at least gutless.

But if I’ve learned anything as a Careerist, I’ve learned that you’ve got to take some risks. Take a risk on an odd job, and you might get free parking at the ballpark and all the Dodger dogs you ever wanted to eat. If you’re skeptical and decide not to show up, you can be certain of only one thing; that you won’t make any money and your life won’t change.

So I braved the 405 and went to the interview. And if I wasn’t devastatingly beautiful, I definitely looked as gorgeous as the Recruiter could have asked from a writer on a budget. It didn’t hurt that by this time I had a serious discount at the store and wore a new black wool dress that was both professional and uniquely alluring at the same time.

Somehow or other, I managed to convince these finance types that a woman with an MFA in Screenwriting was capable of gaining an interest in finance where there currently was none, and they hired me on a temporary basis for two weeks. I sincerely believe that I nailed the interview when I mentioned that I wasn’t afraid to try anything when it came to my career and even sold concessions at Dodger Stadium when I needed to. No joke. I think they were impressed.

The only snafu occurred when I mentioned that I was interested to hear about their film financing. I was told quickly and without any equivocation that there was no film financing whatsoever taking place at this company. In this moment, I was grateful for the professional and uniquely alluring black dress, which was the only thing making me feel like something other than an ass.

Driving home, Northbound on the 405, I wondered why the Recruiter told me that they did film financing. Had she been misinformed? Was she confused? Or had she lied to me in order to create a link, however tenuous, between my ambitions and the functioning of this company? But it occurred to me how stupid it was to think that a hedge fund could have anything to do with film financing, because no one whose primary function is to lessen risk for investors wants anything to do with something as risky as film. In any case, I was happy that they forgave me for my misinformation and happy to have the opportunity.

And yet, I hedged. An opportunity is one thing, and a sure thing another. I decided to keep working at the store while I worked at the hedge fund, knowing that nothing was in the bag yet. And I also balked at telling my parents that I’d had the interview, that I even had the temporary work. I told myself at the time that I kept the good news from them in case I didn’t get the permanent job, so that I could limit the disappointment they might feel. But I knew, and wouldn’t admit, that I wanted the ability to call off all my bets without having to explain myself.

Southbound on the 405

I grew up in Oklahoma, where it is possible to have sixty miles of highway between two buildings, without any other buildings in between. You could assume that this would be a beautiful landscape. I might adjust your perception by mentioning that the same stretch of highway is completely straight and completely flat, and then you would have to admit that this landscape is incredibly boring. Unless you are driving down the highway during a huge tornado. Which does happen, and is not boring.

Another thing you might ponder, after some more thought, is that such a lonely highway does not support the need of public transportation. And then you might surmise that the towns, which are sixty miles apart, are probably not densely populated, but are in fact rather spread out. In short, you might deduce that there are plenty of open spaces and only one way to traverse them: by car. You would be correct. The good news is, when there are plenty of open spaces, there’s lots of parking.

So while I grew up with cars as a part of my life and feel comfortable driving one, driving in Los Angeles is not the same as driving in Oklahoma. This has to do with a general lack of open spaces. So, in addition to feeling anxious about parking, which (horrors!) sometimes must be done in parallel, I am generally anxious when other cars are present. Which is, in fact, all the time.

Highways are not called highways in California. They are called Freeways. This is, presumably, because they are always gridlocked. Because that makes sense. And the worst of the worst, the most abysmal Freeway in existence, is the 405.

I experienced Interstate 405 for the first time when I drove to the Store for my interview. I had unintentionally managed to avoid this odious stretch of Freeway for the first four months of my residence in Los Angeles, but google maps finally betrayed me when I searched for directions to the mall. I spent forty minutes crawling along between the bare hills in the baking sun, and forever afterwards have hated that freeway. I have spent the year or so since devising ways to avoid this freeway, and I wasted no time finding out how to cut it completely out of my LA life. In fact, when the hiring manager at the store asked me if I had any questions about the job, I asked her how to get to work without setting a tire on that blasted free way. She told me to take Beverly Glen Boulevard. Best advice EVER.

Unfortunately, there’s really no way to get all the way to Santa Monica without using the 405. And that’s exactly where the Recruiter wanted me to go (looking gorgeous, of course.) The Hedge Fund, while located in Santa Monica, was operational during the hours that the New York Stock Exchange is open, which is from 6am Pacific to 2pm Pacific. One would suppose that driving from the Valley to Santa Monica at 5:30 am would be simple and easy. There are a couple reasons this was not true. One, driving on the 405 is never easy. Two, 5:30am is never easy.

I’m not used to hurtling along at 70 mph on a dark freeway before dawn, tailgating the guy in front of me and being tailgated by the guy behind me. I’m an Okie, and when I learned to drive, if I felt like pushing the speedometer up to 80 and continuing at such a speed for 60 miles, I only did so when I couldn’t see any cars in front of me, nor any behind. And this was on a straight, flat road. Sans tornado.

But Southbound on the 405 I went, in the dark and half asleep, hoping I looked gorgeous for the Hedge Fund.

Tinseltown

The hiring manager at The Store had promised that hours were always available and that speedy advancement was practically guaranteed. She told me that acting was her passion, but that her retail job had allowed her to survive while she pursued the acting career, and she said that The Store could be the same sort of salvation for me. But when I arrived on my first day of the job, she handed me the paperwork to be filled out and announced that it was her last day on the job. She was gong to go work for some other company in the same mall. This was not a good sign, but I tried to ignore this fact.

Then I got my schedule for my second week with The Store, and the signs got a little harder to ignore. It indicated that I would only have eight hours in the coming week during which I might prove to the bosses that I was their next personal shopper or outstanding key-holder to be. I discovered that eight hours was, in fact, just enough time to convince the store managers that I was really not good at sales. The outlook was dim.

Luckily, my extensive craigslisting from the previous weeks was about to pay off a second time. One afternoon, I received a voice message from a staffing firm that specialized in entertainment. They wanted to see me for an interview.

I was overjoyed. I have had previous success with staffing firms for only one reason; they test their applicants.

Most people hate tests. Some people even go as far as to say, “I am not a good test taker.” It stands to reason that an equal number of people would be able to say the opposite, but I suspect that this is not the case, since each time I say that I am an outstanding test taker I get dirty looks. While this deters me from bringing my own bubble sheets to cocktail parties so that I may astound my friends with my standardized test-taking prowess, it has not stopped me from admitting without shame that I am a truly terrific test-taker. For example, each time I go to a staffing firm and take their little typing test and Microsoft Office test, I impress the recruiters. Some people are just lucky, I guess.

You, dear reader, may wish to suggest that my luck is rather limited. You might think that I would want to trade in my test-taking capabilities for some other qualities, like being born at the top or being devastatingly beautiful. You might suggest that I would be a more cheerful individual since such charms would take me much further in the realm of social interaction. You may be right. Especially since networking is everything. Nevertheless, I cling to the few footholds that I have.

So, I eagerly returned the call to the staffing firm, and, woe! There was one unforeseen obstacle in my way. The woman who answered the phone when I called to schedule my appointment was quite rude. Unhelpful even.

She refused to schedule an appointment when I called. “I schedule appointments from 1pm to 3pm. Call back,” she said. It’s one thing to covet a sorority girl’s ability to drive a stick shift. It’s another thing to realize that the Gatekeeper of All The Real Jobs has a job that you could do better but that you will never get the chance to prove this. My patience was bolstered only by remembering that there were tests to be taken here, and I imagined what kind of horrors were revealed when, during the fall of her senior year, the Gatekeeper opened the envelope from the College Board and saw her woefully unamazing SAT scores. I agreed, though scornfully, to call back when it was most convenient for the receptionist at the other end of the line, and finally scored an interview.

This employment agency, being a super special entertainment industry agency, has its office on Sunset Boulevard. But nothing on Sunset Boulevard is ever clean, pleasant, or hopeful. Hollywood is, in general, a nasty place. No, I’m not referring to the American film industry. I’m talking the part of the City of Los Angeles that is actually called Hollywood on the map. It’s not a nice place for a number of reasons. It’s dirty and crowded, the parking is sparse and expensive, all the single men are pick-up artists without an ounce of sincerity in their bodies, and so forth.

Furthermore, it’s crawling with tourists, and while we’ve all been tourists at some time or another, we all hate tourists when we’re being normal people in our own town. My abhorrence of fanny-packed, sock and sandal wearing men who feel it necessary to take pictures of the sidewalk is hardly unique. But, then again, I have to feel sorry for the tourists who come to Hollywood. Some of them are clearly from foreign countries, and even the American ones look like they might have traveled a very long way to see Tinseltown. And when they get there, they don’t find anything worth taking pictures of except for the sidewalk. Because the names on the Hollywood Walk of Fame are just about the only thing in Hollywood that has anything to do with the film industry. That, and the adult bookstores that look from the outside like they haven’t been dusted since the advent of VHS.

No one actually makes movies in Hollywood, and there’s actually nothing to see there except a couple of famous theatres and some seedy-looking movie museums. Though “Hollywood” is a word synonymous with entertainment, there’s nothing there to entertain, and the physical place itself has become irrelevant to the entertainment industry.

So it stands to reason that the reception area of this entertainment staffing firm located in Hollywood would be less than appealing. It was, in a word, wretched. The California sunshine filtered through one large window that had been coated with something to keep the heat out, but the heat came through anyway, and the sunshine was dull and illuminated only the dust filtering through the air. While the other half a dozen or so applicants and I sat and waited for their interview, we entertained ourselves by avoiding the sight or touch of a dirty, shaggy, smelly dog which weaved his way around the legs of our cheap chairs.

After a long, claustrophobic wait in the dingy waiting room, I took a long, but blessedly easy test in a dingy room full of computers and another half dozen applicants.

Finally, I was ushered by someone into a crowded, cluttered office, where a Recruiter huffed about the way I’d written my resume while she scratched the head of the mangy cur that had, unfortunately, shuffled into the office while I sat there and waited for the Recruiter to say something helpful. I told her I was a writer, she asked me if I wanted work at the agencies. I told her no, that I wanted time to keep writing. Then she sat up in her chair as if her addled brain had suddenly been shocked into competency for the first time in years.

“I have just the thing! Just the perfect job for you!”

The Recruiter at the entertainment staffing firm had a hedge fund client who needed a receptionist. It was the perfect job for me, she said, because the hours were from 6 am to 3pm. I would be able to write for the rest of the day! And there would be no traffic at those hours, so the commute to Santa Monica would be no trouble at all!

I agreed to go to the hedge fund for an interview, and the Recruiter called them that instant and set the appointment for the next morning. The Recruiter scooted me out the door and reminded me to “look gorgeous,” as though she were sending me to a casting call.

I successfully escaped the dreary reception area and fled to the dreary street where I’d parked my car. I was caught between two thoughts; I was thrilled to have an interview so fast, but chagrined that the job was not even related to entertainment.

But I got in my car, shut the door and looked around at the bland, sun-baked buildings in Hollywood and wondered. Did I really want a job in entertainment? Maybe it would make more sense if I worked outside of the industry while I wrote. Maybe finance was actually a good place for me. Still, I couldn’t understand how I’d managed to sign on with an entertainment staffing agency in Hollywood and walk out with an interview with a hedge fund. Except for the fact that Hollywood really doesn’t have a lot of entertainment to offer these days.