A Short Story By Abigail and Jesse Pesta

I needed the job but there were red flags during my interview at Magma Ltd.

For starters, the interview lasted just five minutes, during which time the boss, Nell, told me her four rules of employment. “To work here, the rules are, obey the dress code, be punctual, get along with other people, and have fun!”

She stressed the word “fun!” by slapping her hand loudly on the desk. The noise startled a bird perched on a bookcase a few feet away. It flapped its wings and squawked a word that sounded like “turtleneck.”

The interview was being conducted in the middle of a vast, open loft space in London’s East End. All across the room, not a head turned.

Nell and I were perched as well — atop tall, wobbly director’s chairs. Nell spun in her chair and pointed to a sign, laminated and nailed to the wall, listing the four employment rules in capital letters. Then she whipped back around and smiled aggressively, displaying the hidden reaches of her gums.

My turn to talk.

I didn’t know what to say about any of this, so I asked about the dress code. She looked at me as if I had let her down. “This is quite important to us, Karen,” she said in what struck me under the circumstances as a zany British accent. “No mock turtlenecks.”

I chuckled lightly, thinking it had to be a joke, an attempt to break the ice. But no, Nell was serious. “There is no reason to wear mock turtlenecks when you can wear real turtlenecks,” she said.

Then she added, “And if you cannot arrange your life so that you arrive at your desk punctually at 8:30 then I shall be obligated to give you the sack. That’s rule number one.”

With that, she jumped down from her very tall director’s chair, indicating the interview was over. How interesting, I thought, it’s the first time anyone had threatened to fire me before even hiring me.

As Nell walked me to the door, she asked the receptionist to get my coat for me. When it arrived, Nell took it and looked inside at the label. “Right, the Gap,” she said, and snorted. At that particular time in London, Gaps were popping up all over the city, a sure sign of the apocalypse to anyone who dressed like Nell.

Nell’s wardrobe certainly did not come from the Gap. Rather it consisted of a dramatic assortment of scarves, shawls and something evocative of a kimono, layered on top of a billowy skirt. Anyone else wearing this would have looked fat, but Nell was obviously skinny as a bean pole. The effect was something like a cross between Stevie Nicks in her prime and heroin chic.

I went home.

You might wonder why I’d even be applying for a job as an office coordinator — what does that mean, anyway? — working for a lunatic in a caftan, with a pet parrot, at a company named after molten rock.

Well, the reason is, I wanted to live in London. I wanted it badly. It was 1995, I was straight out of college, and I had just four weeks to find a job. My college roommate’s parents had generously offered to let me stay with them in London while I job-hunted, and I had only three days left. After that it would be back to Indiana.

In light of all that, Magma didn’t look so bad. Not only was it in the East End, a landscape of art galleries and gymnasium-sized clubs scattered across a backdrop of industrial desolation, but it paid money.

The next morning at breakfast, my friend’s mom looked at me quizzically and told me that I had received a couple of phone messages. One was from the police station, she said, reminding me about a pending court date. The other was from an angry man calling himself Dr. Tad, chastising me for missing an appointment for microdermabrasion of my arms and chest.

Obviously, these were prank calls. After all, who sandpapers their chest?

I wondered who would possibly be prank-calling me in London, out of the blue. So we did a caller ID, and got connected — guess where — to the main switchboard at Magma.

Someone on staff at Magma was pretending to be someone named Dr. Tad. My future prospective colleagues were crank-calling me.

What an asylum that place must be, I decided.

Still, in a sign of my desperation for employment, I spent the afternoon at the library trying to figure out what Magma actually did. I found a reference in a newspaper to a public-nuisance complaint having to do with pancakes being thrown out the office window at pedestrians, but nothing actually describing the company’s main line of business.

That very afternoon, I received another phone message, this one from Nell. She wanted to offer me the job.

I called her back immediately, with a mix of anticipation and dread. “I’m really excited about working with you,” I told Nell, hoping that she didn’t hear my voice cracking out of nervousness. “I’d love to know more about what my role will be at Magma, as we didn’t go into much detail during the interview.” Which was an understatement.

Nell went silent for a moment, as if she hadn’t actually thought about that yet. “Well. There’s an absolute mountain of mail that must be opened,” she said. “And there are many things that are still waiting to be laminated.”

Then she added, “And when I'm away, of course, someone must care for William.”

“William?” I asked.

“Yes, William, the cockatoo whom you should have met during your first round of interviews,” she said. 

“I’ll expect you promptly at 8:30 on Monday — don’t be late!" Nell said. And then, as if she were practicing scales for the choir, she warbled an astonishing “Thank youuu!” and rang off.