Interview # 1/Hooters # 1

My interview attire: after doing my research I settled on a black dress - casual top that showed what little cleavage I have left after my much needed and wanted breast reduction in '09 (ironic that I'd be applying to Hooters right!?), paired with some dress - casual gray and black shorts with a pair of black wedges. I wore my hair down of course which is the "Hooters Way" and wore a considerable amount of makeup. From what I hear there is a fine line between not enough and too much. Apparently they are trying to portray a "sexy girl next door look"... although whenever I've heard "the girl next door" I've always pictured a tall, skinny, nerdy girl with glasses and braids playing a flute. I don't know why; maybe my brain is corrupt or maybe that's because the girl next door to me was that way but I guess they don't literally mean the girl next door. :/ Anyway, back to my attire. I struggled with the decision to wear or not to wear panty hose with my shorts. Normally I would not even consider such a thing (who wear pantyhose with shorts?) but since I know Hooters Girl's are required to wear them under their shorts I wasn't sure if maybe it would be a good idea to wear them. I put them on to see if that would help my decision but since the only ones I had were tan and not neutral I decided against it. You see, while I'm not ghostly white and was actually blessed with an olive complexion, the very tan panty hose made my upper body look strange considering it hasn't seen the sun for the past 2 summers. :(

On my way to my interview I have to overcome just about every obstacle that could be thrown my way. I got behind a school bus (is it early dismissal for schools today? Wtf?), had to turn around and take an alternate route 'cause the Department of Transportation decided to torture me by re-paving the major road that runs between my house and Hooters #1  (yay), and then followed an ol' blue hair the rest of the way on a 2 lane street. I pull in at exactly 12:30. Oh but what's this? My left eye is watering and smudging the eyeliner I just spent 2 hours perfecting. Ugh! I'm searching everywhere in the car for a napkin or tissue... no luck. Then I see the jacket in my backseat that I just so happened to have left back there the other day when I had to work in the freezer at my current job (retail merchandiser). I used the sleeve of the jacket to try to dry my eye and push the remaining eyeliner back into place the way you would the icing on a cake after the fat kid at the party couldn't help but put his chubby little fingers in it. And for no good reason at all, this is exactly how my left eye felt, like a fat kids chubby little fingers were all up in it. Ugh! Of course this is happenening. Finally I gave up and decided to just go inside. After all it was pushing 12:35 and I'm now late to my first interview.

Contemplating whether or not to just turn around and run (after all I have 2 more interviews, I can do better for the other 2) my feet wind up deciding for me and before I know it I'm standing at the bar asking for the manager who I won't name. He comes walking out after a very uncomfortable 10 minutes (obviously I'm the center of attention and everyone's wondering why I'm there and staring at my smudge eyeliner, or at least that's what I thought at the time) he walks up to me and introduces himself. He leads me over to one of the high top tables in the corner. People are sitting all around us which definitely doesn't help my level of comfort. Great, now instead of making eye contact and smiling I most likely have a putrid look on my face as I'm sitting there thinking a) why the f*** would they schedule an interview on their busy lunch hour and b) why would they do the interview at the tables on said busy lunch hour right next to the customers? I figure it must just be a test of how I handle pressure, so i go with it.

Mr. Manager goes about asking the usual interview questions and I answer them perfectly in my opinion. He tells me a lot about Hooters which I already knew or that I read online in preparation for my interview. He then starts asking if I'd be comfortable in the uniform (nope, I applied hoping you would make an exception for me and let me wear a moo moo, or however you spell it, instead) and if I've ever worked in this type of environment before. Then he gets this weird look on his face and I can't tell if he's constipated or if I've said something wrong; he asks, "So is this how your hair usually looks, the color I mean?" Okay, the question is fine, but why the hell do you have a disgusted look on your face? What's that all about? I recently went from blonde highlights to a medium brown - burgundy color. Ya I know, wrong timing for a Hooters interview. I answer him, "my natural hair color is a medium brown color but most of the time I have blonde highlights. This burgundy color is something new I tried a few weeksago. If it's a problem, I can always switch back to my highlights. I love my highlights!" I remind myself to smile, but not too big.

He concludes the interview by explaining the rest of the hiring process which will include a 2nd interview and a 3rd in which I will be given a uniform to try on and then I will be tested on a mock serving session. WHAT!? ROLE PLAYING? I HATE ROLE PLAYING! Then I told myself "Oh well, it's mandatory, suck it up!" We scheduled my 2nd interview for 2:00 on Wednesday.

I left feeling okay about my first interview. It wasn't great but it wasn't the worst either. If Mr. Manager had been a little more personable and didn't have the personality of a banana peel, it probably would have gone better.

Here's to hoping I hit a home run at interview # 2!