Pitfall on the East Side

On a crisp Sunday morning I hiked my way over to the East Side. Perched inside a starched, white collar; streaming a tie in the wind; flashing my shoes in the sun – they were “made in the mountains of Italy” and the world was going to know it! My destination was an expensive residential building. It housed a woman who (allegedly) spoke a language for each finger, was acquainted with royalty, and did quite well in the bizarre realm of Middle Eastern finance.
“Have a cup of tea. Take your tie off if you want. You’re a writer yeah? How would you change this document?” Whoosh!
I took a deep breath, thinking, “I’m being tested,” and eventually settled in to edit the dense bit of marketing copy.
She provided only a brief explanation after I handed in my assignment: “What I basically want to do is dive in for a few hours and see how well we work together.”
I know what you’re thinking, oldest trick in the book, right? Well, yeah, actually, but her resume was so impressive I hoped that it wasn’t true. How could a successful business person, a liaison associated with millions of dollars of financial transactions, dare to abuse the green, hard-searching hopefuls of NYC under the guise of an unpaid internship?
The tea must have sedated me. Some sort of compliance chemical stole my wits. Maybe she was stocking sodium pentothal, I don’t know, but, before I could say “MS Word,” I had redrafted her corporate summary, consolidated, edited, searched…lions and tigers and “I don’t know where the new file is, it’s your computer! ”
I stared into the irrational face of evil, my friends. At least, that was my impression. When I finally begged off my replacement was on her way in. She had us working in shifts.
“Now I want to see how you two work together.” The newcomer and I exchanged looks. Our “interviewer” was improvising.
“Sorry. I have a lunch. You only had me allocate four hours.”
I was dazed when I hit the streets. The sun glanced off the high-rise mirrors into my eyes, not my shoes. Where had my Sunday gone? What was in that tea? As I retreated towards the nearest downtown train I realized that, in a way, I had done well. She wanted me to come back and do more of her work for her.
In the hallway, before my escape, I managed to address the issue at hand, after the woman expressed that I could contribute alot. “I think your right. I can do this for you, but I need to know that it’s heading somewhere.”
She hadn’t taught me anything, or even been pleasant (though the tea was nice). As the train rolled into the station, I reflected that she had not even offered the courtesy of subway fare. Sharks man! Next time I’ll have use my skills for someone who is willing to pay for them.