Musings from Brian J. Noggle

Sometime in my younger days, when I was living with relatives in St. Charles, Missouri, I got it in my head that receiving mail was a grown up thing, and that it was prestigious to get something in the mailbox with my name on it. Particularly if it said “Mr. Brian Noggle” on it. My Uncle Jim got stuff all the time like that, and I hoped he was impressed when I did. Hey, I was twelve years old, and it was seemed like a good idea at the time.

I managed to mail away for some anti-abortion arm bands that Jerry Falwell was sending out, and once you’re on Jerry’s list, you can plan on being Jerry’s list for a long time. I also found a religious magazine, the Plain Truth, that mailed out free booklets on request, so I got a good helping of those sorts of things. For a while, I was reading quite a bit of religious material. Strange, when you look at my general lackadaisical religious attitude these days, that I was quite a conservative little guy, almost, at one time.

Well, through my various machinations and an abortive flirtation with subsidy publishers (I was going to send in my first volume of poetry by December 1984, I seem to recall–I was still twelve years old, but ambitious), I managed to get myself onto a number of mailing lists. Hopefully my uncle was impressed, but then I moved out of his house and my love of receiving mail followed me to Murphy, Missouri. I was still getting stuff from The Moral Majority, but eventually they realized I was broke and/or disinterested so their trickle ceased altogether. Somewhere along this time, I sent my first short story, “Cricket: A Dog’s Life” to McCall’s magazine, or maybe it was “A Walk in the Park” to Hitchcock’s, but the transition began.

Soon the only things coming in the mail were the usual money-bearing cards from relatives for holidays, but when I started to send my works into magazines, there started a new flow of –well, rejection slips for the most part, but with each article in the mail, there is always the hopes of publication, and those self-addressed stamped envelopes could be the bearer of wonderful news. The beauty of this, I suppose, is that the possibility of money from heaven (or at least the Postal Service) all year round, but then it is based on my ability and not the duty of relatives–and so far, the return has been so nil that I often question my ability. But, with each new piece and each new mailing, there is new hope, so I continue on.

There is a half hour to go until today’s delivery. What could it bring? Well, it is the end of the month, so at least there won’t be any bills–which, as a full adult, I have come to recognize as a majority of modern mailings. I even look forward to bills, probably for some deep philosophical reason that they affirm my objective existence or something. I could, in theory, get an acceptance letter from a magazine–I currently have several submissions on the wing, er, on the postman’s back. More likely than not I shall receive at least four rejection slips, which would be fine, too. I only have a rejection slip from one of the five magazines, and the other four would be wonderful additions to my rejection slip collection.

I could, in theory, get a letter from one of my friends or my brother in Hawaii, but I just visited Missouri in June of 1993, and so no one would be writing me this soon. The possibility exists, though, and anticipation is tickling my stomach.

I could also get some little catalogue of something strange and wonderful- -such as the Firebird Arts and Music Catalog that I get every season even though I have not actually purchased anything from them in five years or one of the computer catalogues that have discovered me. Probably, though, if I get anything, it will be a notification of the urgency of a sweepstakes entry or the application for an American Express card–if there is one constant through life, it is junk mail. It has lost its relevance in my life, but it keeps on coming.

But, I must say, it makes me feel like a grown up, and an objectively existent one at that.

When you go on a job interview, common advice reminds, you interview the company as much it interviews you. Remember, just as you might exaggerate that you have ten years’ experience developing .NET on Linux, the company might embellish its resemblance to a happy television family. Whether the company represents the Cosbys or the Bundys, participants in your four-hour interrogation will concur that the company represents the Panglossian best possible workplace. Managers want to fluff the company’s stock price. The proletariat wants more proletariat to share its burden. If the company demands twelve hour days or offers daily browbeatings, no one will tell an outsider. You would only learn true company morale after you started unless you conducted a little reconnaissance during your interview.

To gauge employees’ true attitudes toward a company and its working environment, you can reconnoiter two locations in the building: the kitchen and the bathroom. In most cases, no professional employee bears the task of cleaning these locations during working hour. Contrast these areas with conference rooms, such as the one wherein the company will grill you, which the company keeps fastidiously clean and presentable for interviewees, roving executives, and venture capitalists. The regular grunts in the trenches don’t spend that much time lounging in conference rooms. On the other hand, many non-executive employees use the kitchenette and the bathroom, and you can glimpse their corporate pride and morale in these utilitarian locations.

During your interview, ask for a tour wherein you can see the kitchen, or at least the coffeemaker alcove. If the company doesn’t offer a coffeemaker for employees, politely but quickly end the interview and flee. When the interviewer breezes you through the kitchen, pay attention to the counter around the coffeepot and the sink. Dirty dishes on the counter can indicate bad news. Coffee stains might indicate that the poor souls working for the company are too overworked to wipe up after themselves. The company has too few resources for what it does, and you better not have personal plans on Saturdays. Untended spills might also indicate that the employees here delegate cleaning to, or worse yet assume it will be done by, underlings or the new guy.

A clean kitchen indicates that the other employees handle their spills and mistakes. Or they want to make a good first impression on the employees who might wander in after them. Such ambition and drive is good. Or maybe they’re just decent, clean people. Regardless, a clean countertop bodes well.

You can apply the same observation to a bathroom used exclusively or predominately by employees. If the company has its own campus or building, look for a bathroom behind the receptionist’s desk to provide the best intelligence. Ideally, you could review such a facility before your official interview begins, but don’t be afraid to ask the HR person to whom you hand your official application about the nearest bathroom before he or she hands you off to the real interviewer.

While you’re straightening your tie or fixing your makeup, check for paper towels on the floor. They can indicate that employees have creases a little too tight in their pants to bend over and pick up what they drop. You can also examine the counters for excessive water/soap residue. If the employees don’t wipe up after themselves, who will? Look for graffiti on the stall walls, urine on the toilet seats or, worse, vice versa. If the employees show less concern for their workplace than for a tavern, they’ll probably show you the same tenderness they show a beer-scented conversationalist in that same tavern.

Regardless of the company line during the interview, nothing describes the other employees’ care and attention to detail, as well as their overall job satisfaction and pride, as how they treat those corporate spaces for which they have no direct responsibility but in which they can, and often will, make individual messes. Your surreptitious health inspections represent a quick and dirty way to find out how quick and dirty the company operates. The snap judgments you make are no less valid than the snap judgments that the company will make about you based upon the color of your slacks and the length of your hair.