Morning all. Woken up by birds outside the bedroom window who had their volume turned up all the way, surprisingly I am the only one it woke. So still time to write. timers set and off we go.
Spent yesterday talking to a somewhat overly self important person. I think that may have trickled in…
Thursday, March 20th: He had not prepared for failure.
He had not prepared for failure. Why would he. George had always been successful at accomplishing anything he put his mind to. Had he not excelled at everything he tried? He was captain of the football team in high school and maintained a 4.0 GPA all through school without even trying. He picked from a list of schools to attend, choosing the ones that wanted him. Some of the schools offering him a place he didn’t even remember applying to. But as he also didn’t remember attending many of the school exams he aced, he didn’t sweat the details.
He chose the school he liked the most and breezed through his classes while squeezing the most fun out of each semester as he could. He was then given his choice of jobs. He selected the one that suited him the most and off he went, settled into a nice comfortable life.
It wasn’t his fault that the economy shifted. Or that the company ended up going bankrupt. George shook his head. He had no worries and assumed another job would come along. He applied to companies he thought would suit him and in many places was granted an interview. He found the concept amusing as he had never had to interview for anything.
People simply saw his name and invited him to join them. He was just that good.
Or at least he had been.
In the last six months he had gone to several interview, willing to indulge those who felt the process was necessary. None of those interviews turned into job offers. He also didn’t get any job offers from the companies that didn’t request interviews.
‘They could just be biding their time,’ he thought. They wouldn’t want to look too eager.
Still those offers never materialized. He was puzzled as to why when he went home for the monthly family dinner. He wasn’t looking forward to telling the family he was between jobs at the moment. At least not without good cause. However, he had never been one for a savings plan and his bank account was rapidly dwindling. He would need to ask if his father could give him a loan.
George waited until the opportune moment and finally managed to get his father alone.
‘Which companies did you apply to?” His father asked.
George dutifully listed them out, wondering why it mattered.
“Ah,” his father said. “We don’t have any contracts with them. I’ll give you a list.”
“What do you mean contracts?” George asked.
“That’s why you were hired at the other company,” his father explained. “We had a contract with them so they hired you.”
“Why would you do that?” George asked, he frowned, puzzled. “I’m good enough to get a job on my own.”
His father laughed. “We had to endow the university to get them to grant you a degree. We also had to do a separate endowment to get them to let you in. As we also had to pay your high school so you would graduate it wasn’t unexpected,’ his father said.
“What?” George asked. He frowned at his father.
“You never went to your high school exams, how did you think you passed?”
Ten til Midnight 