Read Assessment Day :: Chapter Eight

Donald and Millicent both looked happy to see me when I entered what was, by now, the third waiting room of the day. This one was much smaller than the other two but didn’t feel any more crowded. That was because there were far fewer candidates in this room, maybe only fifty or so. Hugh Jaman was still here, as well as Natalie Yamnson of course.

“You managed to give the right answer then?” Donald asked me as I approached. I hadn’t, I’d gotten the question very wrong, but for some reason I was still here.

“Yep,” I lied, “It was a simple numerical answer.”

“Numerical? You gave an actual number?” Donald looked impressed, Millicent less so.

“Well we made it to the final stage, right?” Millicent was smiling as always, I was amazed she could still do that. I felt like my shoulders would cave in under the pressure I was feeling and it was taking everything I had to stop myself from shaking, let alone put on a smile.

“Not yet,” Donald looked serious for a moment, “They still haven’t announced the results of the written and technical assessment.” The weight on my shoulders felt heavier. On the plus side my nerves meant that I no longer felt hungry.

No further candidates came into the new waiting room, meaning that I was the last candidate to pass the interview. At a few minutes past two, Arthur Cessman finally came in. All of us turned to look at him expectantly.

“Before we properly begin the final stage of the assessment day…” Arthur Cessman proceeded to list off around thirty names, “All of you leave, your answers to the written and technical assessment questions were found to be insufficient.”

There was no protest this time, the rejected candidates all left the room to, no doubt, be escorted back to the lobby to hand in their pass at reception and leave. Arthur Cessman didn’t say anything for a few seconds after they left. I did a quick head count of those of us that were still in the running. Seventeen of us. Seventeen out of the hundreds that had arrived first thing that morning. Donald, Millicent, Hugh Jaman and Natalie Yamnson had all made it. As I looked around I got a strange, oppressive feeling. It was similar to the feeling I got when I’d first spoke to the receptionist, when Arthur Cessman had been assessing, or had finished assessing, me. It was a sense of danger. Here, in this room, with these sixteen other candidates, I was in grave danger.

No! Don’t back out now! Not after you’ve gotten so far!

My face felt hot, my pulse quickened, my legs began quaking, my shoulders ached and dammit dammit this is bad this is bad I can’t stay here I can’t be here I… I… I clenched my teeth and breathed as deeply as I could. The only thing I could do was what I had done every day for years.

You will study hard, with all your heart and with all your soul and all your strength and with all your mind. You will learn and you will experience and you will train and you will graduate university. You will get a job, and you will never work in retail.

As I ran through this mantra over and over in my head and, as I did, I began to calm down. This is what I had spent years of my life studying and training for, this was no time to balk.

“Congratulations to the seventeen of you. You have proven yourselves capable and deserving of the position of assistant graduate trainee intern here at Extech.” Arthur Cessman was speaking now, making eye contact with each of us in turn as he spoke. “But there is only one vacancy, and thus you must prove yourself to not only be a good choice, but the right choice. And you will prove this to us by obtaining victory in the battle royale.”

Victory in the battle royale. Yes this was the final stage, the final test of our ability that truly put us in direct competition with the each other.

“But before that,” as Arthur Cessman continued the door opened and a trolley was pushed in by the woman who’d been calling us to interviews, “You have until three o’clock to eat,” he waved a hand towards the trolley, the boxes on which presumably contained food, “and prepare for the battle royale, please use the time wisely.” With that, Arthur Cessman and the other woman left the room, leaving us with a trolley of food and our thoughts.

No one moved.

My stomach chose this moment to start grumbling again. Millicent burst into laughter.

“Are you feeling hungry Norm?” she managed to say. My face turned red but there was no way I could deny it. Millicent, still chuckling, went over and picked up a couple of the boxes from the trolley and placed them on the table. “Well is everyone going to stand around glaring or do you all want to eat?”

A short pause.

“You want… to eat together?” one candidate, a thin man with platinum blonde hair, questioned Millicent.

“Well, yes.” Millicent went to grab another couple of boxes, as well as the paper plates that had been provided.

“We’re enemies, you know that right?” the candidate continued.

“What?” Millicent looked up, “None of you are my enemy.”

“What are you prattling about?” that was Hugh Jaman, “we’ve been competing all day, and after this we’re going to be quite literally fighting each other for this job! Of course we’re enemies!” Hugh Jaman’s voice could get quite loud, but I agreed with him. Did Millicent not even realise what was going on? What she was here for? What we were all here for?

“But we’re not fighting yet, are we?” Millicent began opening boxes, revealing the selection of sandwiches and other finger foods. “In about an hour we will be fighting, and then we can shout at each other and battle each other and hate each other as much as we need to, but before then… well it would be nice to have a chance to eat and rest, right?”

No one responded. My stomach growled again, seemingly just to kick me while I was down.

“You especially, Norm.” Millicent turned to me, apparently inspired by my enthusiastic digestive system. “You look like you’ve viewed everyone else as nothing but enemies your entire life. Like you hate people before you even meet them.”

“I…” I began to respond. For as long as I can remember I had been studying and training with the express purpose of being able to defeat anyone I came up against. It wasn’t that I saw everyone I met as an enemy, it was that everyone here was an enemy! And Millicent now wanted us to all play nice? Was she insane? “Okay…” I heard myself say, I pulled out a chair for myself and sat down. Donald, wearing a strange look that contained hints of a smile, also sat. It was slow going but each candidate also sat around the table, Hugh Jaman even moved another table to join the first so that we could all sit down. And there, in that waiting room, no preparations were made for the upcoming battle royale. We just ate. No one talked, not even Millicent who perhaps had decided she’d pushed her luck far enough. When we’d eaten, a couple of sandwiches left in the boxes, there was no movement to start preparing. It was like Millicent had cast some sort of spell on the group of us and no one wanted to break it.

Eventually someone did break the silence. The platinum haired candidate who’d protested earlier.

“So who are you? And why are you so weird?” The question was directed at Millicent, naturally, and Millicent seemed a little taken aback by the question.

“Weird? I’m perfectly normal thank you very much.” she asserted.

“No you’re not,” the platinum haired candidate denied, “No one in their right mind would sit around eating with the other candidates they were competing against for a job. No one normal would open themselves up like that, it would have given any of us a chance to poison you and knock you out of the running before the final stage even started.”

If Millicent hadn’t realised that her actions had opened her up to a significant amount of risk her expression didn’t show it.

“But you also sat down and ate with me,” she pointed out, “you even let me hand out the food, surely you all are the ones who opened themselves up to being poisoned.”

All of the candidates made faces that communicated pretty clearly that they had ways of detecting and identifying poisons, me included. I’d been watching Millicent’s hands from the start to see if she tried to sneak anything into the food, she hadn’t as far as I could tell.

Millicent smiled, but this wasn’t her smile “as usual”. This wasn’t the perfectly measured and angled, exactly symmetrical, focus group tested, precision engineered pleasant smile that she had been giving all day. This was far more awkward, far less pleasing and far more genuine than any expression she’d shown so far.

“These competitions… these fights…” she began, “they don’t end here, once you get a job, right? Even if I get this position there will always be the threat of another, better graduate taking my position. There will always be the threat of being fired. If I ever want to get a promotion I’ll have to run this same gauntlet again, over and over again, to keep climbing the company ladder. I’ll be in danger from employees from other companies, from employees of this company, from anyone I meet…” Millicent was still smiling, but there was a real sadness in her eyes, “if I get this job, if I get any graduate job… at that point I won’t be able to trust another human being ever again. They will always be a threat, a potential danger… So here… before we go and fight tooth and nail for this job, before one of us gets to enter that world and cast aside their ability to trust anyone ever again… I wanted to be able to trust some people one more time.”

For a while no one had anything to say. Then,

“You’re a strong woman, Millicent Lute.” Natalie Yamnson spoke, her voice laced with authority and power, “but in this world it isn’t the strong that thrive. It’s the cunning.”

“Why are you here, Miss Yamnson?” Donald, rather bravely I’d say, put that question forward to the Coca-Cola princess.

“That is none of your concern. Just know that I am here to compete for the job position just the same as all of you.” She locked eyes with Donald, her gaze steely, “but unlike the rest of you, I am going to succeed.”

The atmosphere shifted completely in that one moment. The spell that Millicent had cast on the group was broken and we were all enemies once more. I inwardly cursed, I’d been too distracted by Millicent’s idealism that I hadn’t observed any of the other candidates. The damn nootropics! Why did I keep forgetting?

As if on cue: Arthur Cessman walked in.

“It is three o’clock,” he announced, “please follow me, it is time for the final stage of the assessment day.”

We all stood up, all watching each other. It was time. I palmed another pill, or maybe it was two pills, and began my internal mantra anew.