I’ve decided that when it comes to job hunting, normal social rules don’t apply.
Last night, when I was at Cafe Coco until 2:30 a.m. sending out resumes and trying to complete a writing test for a position I want to interview for, losing all battery power on my computer just wasn’t an option. My power cord was in my desk at the office, and I had about two solid hours of work to do before I could go home for the night.
I asked the guy next to me if I could borrow one from him, but he had left his at home, too. “You know what you should do, though?,” he said. “Go ask that college kid sitting in there. He’ll probably let you use his.”
So I go ask the Belmont student and his frat brother if they can help me out, and one of them instantly gets the wrong idea. I start to walk outside to have a cigarette, with his power cord already in my hand, and I hear him say to his friend, “Dude, I think she’s hitting on me.” He stands up and follows me out.
“Hey, can I bum one off of you?”
Oh, sure, I say, hoping that he won’t figure out that I’m almost 25 and I think of him as a little boy and I feel a little bit like a pervert for asking him for a power cord in the first place. Especially now that he thinks I have the hots for him.
He asks me where I go to school, and I pause for a second, trying to decide if I should own up to the fact that I could have babysat him when he was a kid. Instead, I lied. “Oh, I just graduated from Lipscomb this summer. I’m here trying to find a job.”
His face lights up, and I instantly feel like an asshole. “Oh, that’s cool, that’s cool. I’m just here with my little brother from my frat. He has study hours and I have to watch him, so like, it kind of sucks, but it’s whatever. It’s cool that you’re not working yet, just chilling, you know. But, seriously, you can use my power cord all night. I don’t even need my computer; I’m totally just chilling out, you know?”
I just went along with it. I started making shit up. I told Lipscomb wasn’t so bad, and that I was in a social club there (trying to appeal to the part of him that thinks paying hefty fines to harass people is awesome), and that I come to Cafe Coco all the time to hang out. He ate it up. “Oh, yeah? What’s your number? I’ll call you next time I come out here. Or, do you want to come with me to my frat’s Halloween party this weekend?”
I gave him a fake number. I combined my phone number with Jake’s phone number, and I gave it to him. And I’m sure that’s someone’s real number, and I’m sure that kid will send someone a text message this weekend, and I’m sure that I’m a complete asshole.
I took his power cord back to my table, where my friend Brian was sitting. “How did that go?” he asked. I told him I felt like a prostitute. All he said was, “I mean, I wasn’t going to say anything, but…well, fair enough.”
This will come back to haunt me someday. I’m sure of it.