Presentation: Pros and cons of barfing in an interview

Ever throw up during a job interview?

Well, I wouldn’t recommend it, but it once worked for me.

I was 25 and trying to land a job as city editor of The Times Record in Brunswick, Maine. For the most part, things had gone pretty well. I’d met with the managing editor over a lunch of fried clams and breezed through the first interview.

I expected as much. I’d researched the area, the newspaper and the competition. Friends even put me through brutal practice interviews, so when the tough questions came, I answered with confidence. I’d prepared for anything – or so I thought.

Following an afternoon break, my prospective boss, his wife, and a senior reporter picked me up that evening for dinner. Soon we were chatting away as we drove down a long peninsula on Casco Bay to a lobster house.

We talked about Maine. We talked about politics. We talked about journalism.

The one thing I didn’t talk about was how my stomach was suddenly feeling.

No problem, I thought. It’s just a bumpy ride.

Then I started to get hot. And dizzy. And nauseous. Since I was a stubborn person who wanted the job, I gritted my teeth and vowed to get through it.

That wasn’t going to happen.

“Can you pull over?” I finally asked.

He did, and in front of three relative strangers I roared like a hideous sea creature along the roadside. When I finished, you couldn’t even hear a gull caw.

We proceeded to dinner. I don’t really remember what we talked about, or if we talked at all, until I asked to be taken to the hospital. I do remember the emergency room doctor asking about my fried clam lunch. He gave me an I.V. and kept me several hours for observation out of fear I’d been exposed to Red Tide Poisoning.

My prospective employer barely spoke the next morning on the way to the airport. “Oh, well,” I told myself as I enjoyed the view out the window. “At least it was a free trip to Maine.”

Believe it or not, I got the job, was eventually promoted to managing editor, and years later drew on my time there for my first novel, “The Way Life Should Be.”

My boss had been impressed with my initial interview, and more impressed that I kept my sense of humor during a very trying evening, which I’d pegged my “Charlie Brown Interview.”

None of this would have happened if I’d let a few bad clams get in the way.

1)      Be prepared.

2)      Be yourself.

3)      No matter what happens, relax and roll with it. And try not to throw up.

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