How to Make Lemonade Without Sugar or Water

Nah, Forget It; Can’t Be Done

On a Friday in August 2010, I was surprised to receive a phone call from the HR Department of a local, highly regarded nursing home to which I had submitted my resume in response to a blind Craig’s List job posting for a Development Associate.

The conversation with the HR drone was insipid but pleasant enough. We covered the usual territory but I was further surprised when the drone revealed the salary range (about 1/3 my last salary). She wanted to be sure I understood that this position, though similar to the work I’d been doing, would not pay anywhere near what I had been earning and that there’d be no point in setting up an interview if I had a problem with that. I replied that I appreciated her candor and that, yes, I was indeed very interested in pursuing this opportunity and at that salary. We set up an appointment for the following Thursday at which time I would meet with her first and then immediately afterwards with the Director of Development.

Turns out the nursing home is one of the two for which I had submitted applications for my mom—another long and entirely different story altogether. Suffice it to say, my mom never got called by this one.  But this was reportedly one of the two best facilities around and the one  where I’d hoped my mom could spend her last days.  I spent the next week burying the resentment (they never called her!) and weighing the job’s pros and cons. The pros won. First, it’s hard to beat a 15-minute driving commute. Not only did the job provide health care benefits along with vacation and sick time, even more importantly, I’d be doing the same work I did to make rich lawyers even richer but doing it instead for nursing home residents, perhaps the most neglected, ignored, under-served segment of our in-need population. Really, the only downside I could come up with was the salary but compared to zero, one-third was looking pretty good.

I arrived early, found a spot in the lot, approached the front door and froze. I could not enter. The last time I had been in a nursing home was 5 years earlier, to claim the body of my mother. The entrance and layout of this one was almost identical to the one my mom eventually entered and lived in for the last 4 months of her life, after living with me the previous 5 years. It all came rushing back. I lost it. I found a bench off to the side, sat for a few minutes, composed myself and gave it another go. On my way in, I resolved to do everything I possibly could to get this job.

The friendly receptionist invited me to sit while I waited to be escorted to the offices. A sundry collection of wheelchair-bound residents was scattered about the lobby and they watch me intently. I smiled at them. Most smiled back. Some waved. I was keenly aware that for many of them, I had just made their day. Some of them would tell their visitors, if they were lucky enough to have any, that a stranger smiled at them this morning.

When I sat, a resident rolled herself slowly toward me. “What’s it like outside?”

“Not bad.” I replied. “Not too hot. Nice and sunny.”

“Can we go out?”

“I don’t know. Maybe later.”

“Can we go out?”

“I don’t know. We’ll see.”

“Can we go out?”

My heart twisted into a pretzel.

After a short time, the HR Drone appeared and I followed her to the home’s business offices. Along the winding way, I heard staffers joking with one another and with the residents, calling out to one another by name. The facility was spotless and the air was fresh and clean. This is a good place.

At the HR cubicle, after the Drone and I covered the qualifications and what-have-you-been-up-to-lately territory yet again, she surprised me yet again by offering a synposis of her own career and how she “ended up” in a place like this. Her detailed soliloquy came off like an apologia, a need to explain how or why someone with her outstanding education and stellar corporate experience wound up working for a small-ish nursing home (“Don’t get me wrong. The work I do here is very important and I’m very proud etc. etc.”). I wondered why she cared what I knew or thought about her credentials. 

When she was satisfied that she had sufficiently impressed me with her professional chops, she talked a bit about mine, revealing in a roundabout sort of way that the Development Department was positively thrilled that someone of my “caliber” had agreed to meet with them.

By the time I met with the Director of Development, I was feeling the warm glow of a positive vibe. The Director was a friendly, carefully groomed, 65-ish woman who said she had made a name for herself many years back on the beauty queen circuit. I detected the faint aroma of an eccentric, to be sure, but it was nothing I couldn’t handle. When she asked me why I was interested in this position, considering all my fancy-shmancy corporate experience, I took a deep breath and told her the truth. I told her all about my mom and our experiences with nursing homes, of their value and their shortcomings, of my resolve to take a lifetime’s worth of corporate experience and apply it toward something worthwhile and good and of consequence to some of the neediest and most deserving people in my own community. I spoke slowly and carefully and thoughtfully. I opened up my heart to her because I wanted this job, because I needed this job in more ways than one, and because I knew I could do this job better than anyone else she was ever going to meet and because I had to convince her that all of this was important and all of this was true.

One could say it was an award winning performance but it was not. It was not a performance at all; it was heartfelt and coherent and sincere and more difficult and unlike anything I had ever done in an interview, or anywhere else for that matter, in my entire life.

I knew I had succeeded when the Director reached for a tissue and dabbed at her eyes. “Oh dear,” she said. “I believe I’ve just met my ideal partner.”

I reached for my own tissue. “Yes. I believe you have.”

From there, the Director asked if I would mind returning early next week to meet the home’s CEO. “It’s really just a formality and a courtesy. The decision is entirely mine but our CEO likes to meet potential new hires. We want to move very quickly on this, hopefully by next Wednesday, so I’m hoping we can get you back here as soon as possible, maybe even Monday.”

“Of course. Any time. I look forward to meeting her at any time.” I replied. I left. I was happy. No, I was ecstatic.

That was the last time I would ever speak to her.

When the following Wednesday rolled around and I still had heard nothing, I knew I was about to face one of my biggest WTF moments to date. Determined to end this nonsense as soon as possible, I phoned the home and asked to speak to the HR Drone. She surprised me yet again by taking the call. “We offered the position to another candidate on Monday but we thank you for your interest.”

“Oh.” I was so completely blindsided that I was unable to form a question, though an opportunity to do so would arise two weeks later at The Job Fair.

Lesson learned: Forget counting chickens before they hatch, don’t even bother thinking about them till you hear the friggin beaks pounding on your door.