Sunday, June 28, 2020

At work, only one email is waiting for me. We’ll be interviewing a new candidate for my team. Reading the messages, I learn that we'll either interview her in person or online. I both am and am not invited to the meeting. That’s pretty standard. At just about the right time, the VP sits down in the cube across from mine with someone I don’t know. She’s the candidate. The VP asks me to join them. They are both wearing masks. I usually don’t wear one in the office, since we tend to keep far enough apart. Seeing that they both have them, I put mine on. The VP and I talk with her in English. She’s from San Francisco. I like her. I tend to like everybody, though, so that might not count toward whether we should hire her. The VP has me watch the boss’s office to see when his current meeting ends. I can see his door from where I’m sitting. When it’s over, the candidate and VP head in. They signal for me to come in, too. That interview is in Hebrew, but I follow most of it. When we come in, the boss isn’t wearing his mask. I take mine off. I see that the others have pulled their masks down. A few minutes later, in the middle of a sentence, the boss puts his mask on. The others pull theirs up. I put mine back on. The interview ends after a while. I head back to my cube. I try to take a sip of the cooled-down coffee in my mug. The mug hits my mask. The coffee doesn’t splash or spill. I take my mask off again and continue to stare at my screen.