Wasn’t it Groucho Marx who said that he wouldn’t join a club that would have him as a member? I’m starting to view my job search with the same mentality.

First off, you must know that Company X has a thoroughly entertaining website. Every time you click on an internal link or load a new page, you get this awesome bit of music that I swear came from a scene transition on Miami Vice. A smattering of cool drums and laser noises, followed by a near-silent reverb. Classy.

And the web writing is among the finest I’ve seen. Hyphens have been outlawed at Company X, but it’s okay because they have many resources at their disposable. Oh, and they aren’t eliminating potential employees merely for lack of wok experience. That’s good to know.

So, admittedly, I wasn’t expecting much when I showed up at 10:20 for my 10:30 interview. (I mention the time because I got in to the actual interview at 11:10.) But my low expectations were dashed down a few pegs when I saw that every window of the place was plasted with a Vote for Dino Rossi sign. I did not vote for him, nor would I ever.

Once inside, I was met with dingy white walls, filthy industrial grey carpet, and a cardboard sign bearing the Company X logo leaning on the floor against the wall just past the receptionist’s desk. Oh, and the radio was blaring KEXP radio, which apparently specializes in taking easy listening songs and adding a rockin’ backbeat. And I do mean blaring. The receptionist, when she finally arrived at almost 11, had to yell to be heard over it.

As I sat in the dirty gray-and-chrome chair, filling out paperwork, I sized up my competition. The woman who arrived moments before me was a grandma with helmet hair, a frumpy skirt-suit with a breast cancer awareness lapel pin, and spikey black leather boots. She recently moved here from Atlanta to be near her son and 4-year-old granddaughter, because he was relocated by Boeing. She hates the weather here (more to the point, she hates my weather), and her age has been a big problem in finding work.

And yes, it is weird that I know so much about this woman.

A while after I arrived, another woman showed up. She had a shaky grasp on the English language, and she was very chatty and chummy. She was wearing the very same black/grey/hot pink stripey pants that I own and sometimes wear to interviews. She too was wearing spikey black leather boots, and she had her resume tucked into a magazine that she’d brought along, and when she turned it in, she had to pencil in some information on the top.

A while later, another woman joined our little party. Her spikey black leather boots made me wonder if I’d missed a memo somewhere. She was wearing a black pinstripe suit, and she tried very hard to be hip and hide the fact that she was well past middle age by chatting with the receptionist about Britney Spears.

Ah, the receptionist. You would’ve thought she hadn’t had human contact in years. She went on and on, in an inanely loud voice to carry over the music, about how she just moved here from Fort Lauderdale, Florida, where she was forced to become a huge football fan. Apparently there’s a game on Saturday. Oh, and an interesting fact about southern Florida is that nobody who lives there is actually from there.

And the last contestant, who appeared just a few minutes before I was finally summoned to the interview, was a gangly young guy in an oversized and ill-fitting suit. I don’t think he realized the back of his jacket collar was sticking up like he had come straight from a Corey Haim photo shoot. Or maybe he did. I’m not sure which is worse. He had oddly shaped facial features, like a Ken doll that gets pinched in at the ears, and he had one of those wrap-around-your-ear hearing aids. He made a very concerted effort to not make eye contact with the receptionist.

Oh, and then I got to meet Mr. Personality. He made a point of telling me that this was the kind of fun office where the music is blaring, and where there aren’t any “suits.”

The interview went by at a kind of hyperspeed blur. I vaguely remember disturbing phrases about “very small events at QFC” and “the event coordinator position has absolutely no growth potential,” but I was swept up in the surreality of it all.

In my bewilderment, I agreed to a second interview tomorrow at 10am. As I was being shunted out the door, he mentioned that it would be an all-day interview, and that I shouldn’t wear tennis shoes, jeans, or t-shirts, and that I should “check the weather and dress accordingly.” Um…what? Either he thinks I’m too mentally deficient to know how to dress myself, or he’s implying that we’ll be trekking around in the out-of-doors.

So I won’t be going back for the interview. Instead, I’ll sit around wondering why the only people who want to hire me are the ones that I wouldn’t want to work for. It’s like junior high all over again. I was, and ever will be, a geek magnet.