Interview with a Houseplant
Interview with a Houseplant. A not so daily story…
At twenty-four, Mila had been invited to a job interview. Invited seemed a generous word for an event where three strangers would ask her to describe herself for forty-five minutes.
Her friend Noor offered to rehearse with her. Mila agreed, then crouched behind the houseplant.
“You know I can see you?” Noor asked from the armchair.
“I’m talking to Philip.”
Philip was a plant. He had arrived with a label reading philodendron, but Mila had stopped naming him after the first four letters.
Noor took a sip of tea. “Fine. Philip asks: tell us about a challenge you handled at work.”
Mila stared through the leaves. “Our website changed its delivery terms, but nobody told customer support. I wrote new instructions and sorted the complaints.”
“Good. Tell him that.”
“It sounds boring.”
“Then Philip will be delighted. His whole job is standing still.”
Mila tried again. She explained what had gone wrong, what she had done, and how the team had used her instructions. Noor made her stop before she added, “It was nothing, really.”
“Next question,” Noor said. “Where do you see yourself in five years?”
Mila pulled her knees closer. “Philip doesn’t know where he’ll be in five years.”
“Philip hasn’t paid rent in his life.”
“I’d like to stay somewhere long enough to get good at the work,” Mila said at last. “Every time I begin to understand a job, the contract ends.”
Noor put down her cup. “That’s an answer.”
“Is it safe to say?”
“You can leave out the bit where you compare the interviewer to a plant.”
They practised until Mila could say the words without looking at Philip. Then she wrote down three questions of her own, including what training the job offered and why it had become vacant.
Before Noor left, Mila set her interview shoes by the door. She moved Philip back into the light and checked his soil. It was still damp, so she left the watering can alone.
“Goodnight, Philip,” she said.
Noor paused in the doorway. “Do I get a goodnight?”
“You’ve already given me feedback.”
Text and image with help of openAI and MIB
