Now that I wrongly predicted the Ravens/Bengals Thursday night game, I can get back to my riveting tale of my first-ever “real job” interview. I spoke with Altoona Mirror News Editor Joe Frollo about my upcoming interview, and he said to bring a work portfolio with me to the Mirror’s headquarters. He added that if I could get a copy of the Mirror and “copyedit” for him that would be great, too. My interview was scheduled for early that next week, so I got the Sunday’s edition of the Mirror and put my little red pen to work. Now here’s the funny thing. For as much as I suck at speling and grammer, I am great at picking out stupid errors or inconsistencies that nobody else would care about checking. For example, at one job I picked out on a page a period that was one font point size smaller than all the other text. While the graphic artist who made this correction was amazed that I noticed this mistake, I felt more pathetic than anything else. But I digress. So there I was scanning through this newspaper when I came across some mistakes in this publication’s template areas, particularly one in the “Editorial Board” box that got run every day. When I arrived at my interview, I showed Joe everything I had found, and he was … surprised. He especially appeared so when I showed him the “editorial box” where a period was breaking up one editor’s name. As I sat down to take my editing test, he asked if he could have this page and walked away. I knew I bombed this test, but nevertheless it was off to talk with Joe and this other editor who seemed a bit smarmy. I knew I wasn’t getting this job, but they were taking me out to dinner to continue the interview process, so who am I to turn down a free meal?

As I talked with Joe and this other guy, the nameless editor began asking for my opinion about the newspaper, and I gave it to him. Full blast. I don’t remember much of what I said, and most of it wasn’t even negative, but I do remember the guy getting pretty defensive about a number of things. One question I do remember was asking if the Mirror had a Web site because I couldn’t find one after looking through the newspaper and on-line (this was in 1999, so the Internet “revolution” hadn’t hit small publications such as the Mirror yet). I got an answer dealing with how it wouldn’t make the paper any money and that they mail a few copies to subscribers out of state and they would lose that revenue (yeah, all $10/month). When the meal was over and we were back at Mirror headquarters, the interview was wrapping up and Joe said to me in a low voice that he agreed with nearly all of my comments about the newspaper and that he was trying to get his smarmy boss to do many of the things I mentioned. That was when I knew for sure I was never coming back to this place. Sure enough, I was right.

From the moment I left this interview, there were no harsh feelings. I knew I wasn’t qualified for the vacancy (I’m probably still not), and if you think this is some 500-word bitchfest about how the Mirror is run by a bunch of Jew-commies, then you’re sadly mistaken. However, the best part of this story came later when I got the “official” rejection. A few weeks went by and I got this letter from the Mirror. Knowing what it was, I just read the letter’s first sentence and tossed it aside. Mrs. kkk picked it up, thinking there could be some glimmering hope in what was written, and asked how the word “periodically” was spelled. I told her. She agreed with my spelling and said that the letter had it spelled as “periotically.” So not only did a fellow journalism grad misspell a job rejection letter to me, but he also felt me unworthy of a spell-check. Here’s how part of the letter went.

“I will keep your resume on file for 6 months should any other openings present themselves. Other papers periotically contact me about job searches, and I would like to forward a copy of your resume to them.”

How do I remember this? Because I have kept this letter and have it framed.