The Insulting Interview That Taught Me About Dignity And Drive

I was 20 years old, lacking a family, clutching a newly awarded college degree and looking for some direction in my life. I had $84 in my wallet -- which was the sum total of my assets -- so I had to land a job before I could indulge in a life planning session. When you have to eat and put a roof over your head, that takes precedence over career strategy scenarios.

Somehow I found out that that there was an entry-level job opening for a college grad at Texaco, which used to have a big headquarters office in New York's Art Deco inspired Chrysler building. So I whipped together a resume of sorts, took the elevator to the 31st floor and arrived for my interview with a low-level manager I'll call Joe Banks (not his real name). It would turn out to be an insult session disguised as an interrogation.

I knew zero about the ways of corporate America but I expected to be treated fairly and respectfully as a kid seeking to land his first real job, work hard and be paid decently in return. But within a few minutes of the encounter, I could see that what I expected to be an interview, Banks viewed as a one-man tribunal. In an company where he sat at the bottom of the white collar totem pole, he had the opportunity to flex some power for a change and to belittle the only people who entered his office with less clout than him: kids in search of the American dream.

Here is how the interview went:

Banks: So why are you here Stevens?

Me: Well, to apply for your job opening sir. We discussed that on the phone.

Banks: Do you have oil industry experience?

Me: No sir. I just graduated from school.

Banks: So you expect us to give a job to a green grad who knows nothing about the energy sector?

Me: I'm eager to learn and will do all I have to to prove that you made the right choice if you hire me.

Banks: You mean learn on our dollar? At our expense? What do you think this is, just another college course. Why don't you tell your parents to pay for that?

Me: At this stage, I don't have any parents.

Banks: Is that supposed to be a joke?

Me: Not to me sir.

Banks: Do you really think it's proper to apply for a job sporting a mustache -- Mr. no parents?

I took the abuse that delighted Banks to mete out because a)I needed the job and b)I had no idea about the rights and wrongs of corporate etiquette. And then he touched a deep nerve.

Banks: You know Stevens, people like you should apply for civil service jobs. How can you even think that you can build a career in a real business?

I wanted to go ballistic but quietly excused myself, took the elevator back down to 42nd Street and wandered around sort of shell shocked for hours. At first, I absorbed and accepted Banks perspective --- maybe a mutt like me without family, grand education, money or connections -- couldn't build a significant business career. But then it all started to change. I connected with a kind of anger, a resentment that quickly morphed into something much more powerful and productive.

I wasn't going to be belittled by a small mind seeking to find a scapegoat for his failure to launch. Instead, as the weeks and months rolled by, I put the following plan into play:

*I would pride myself on the fact that I was a survivor and that I had been through a kind of personal test few had experienced.

*Next, I would take any job I could get and once the necessities were covered, I would figure out what I was good at and bring that to market. At first through my a productive job and then through businesses of my own.

*I would look for creases in the system and find ways to fill voids others were ignoring.

*I would work hard and fast enough to outrun most of the curve balls that would come my way.

Perhaps most important, Bank's disrespectful and antagonistic behavior led me to understand and apply the drive that was locked into my DNA to my career, to mentally shrink the size of human roadblocks who can appear immense at times in your life and to treat anyone looking for a job at my businesses with dignity and grace.

And to this day if I can help them to achieve more than they ever expected from themselves, I savor that achievement as a fundamental component of a life well lived.