For A First Job Interview.....Well, You Didn't Puke.

This morning, I had my first ever job interview. I'm not going for anything fancy - just a customer assisstant at Marks and Sparks, the eternal home of darling old grannies, mums galore and the occasional sheepish student. Or so I thought.

The interview day started well -- I got up half an hour late, swore loudly, and resolved to save time by leaving my hair natural. On walking past a mirror, it became evident that this really just wasn't an option, and I instead resolved to skip breakfast. Following the loud and determined roar of my stomach, I settled on resolution number 3: don't bother checking the bus timetables, just wing it. Luckily this wasn't an issue on the way there, since my mother took pity on me and dropped me off at some traffic lights (you know the situation, you're in the middle of conversation when the driver starts yelling 'HERE! HERE! GET OUT HERE!' at which point you promptly stagger from the car and - in my case - fall over).

On entering Marks and Spencers, I was faced with a sea of permed white heads, not one of which reached above my elbow - I mean, I know I'm tall, but I swear anyone over the age of about 65 is part-hobbit - which did nothing to ease my fish-out-of-water feeling. After spending the next fifteen minutes or so desperately searching for the customer services desk, I found another interviewee standing nervously at the side and asked her if she'd had to hand a note in to get off school. She was 22. Now blushing scarlet, I was happily collected from the desk and taken through a sliding door only openable by a special card (THAT made me feel special), up some stairs and into a small room with a desk, two chairs and a very small window. Now beginning to feel a little like one of those innocent schoolkids that get bumped off in bad horror films, I was given three sheets of laminated paper and told to learn the information on them and prepare myself for a role-play. Oh, sweet Lord.

Ten stomach-twisting minutes later, a very short (do they put something in the water??) woman entered and began demanding that I give her a standard-sized, Velvet Rose loveseat. After politely explaining to her that we did not have the Velvet Rose loveseat in the standard size, but we do have it in large, or standard in several other colours, she once again insisted that I hand over a standard-sized, Velvet Rose loveseat. I told her that unfortunately the line had been discontinued, but they were still available from many other stores and online, from which there was a 20% off discount on the delivery charge. She told me she wanted a standard-sized, Velvet Rose loveseat from THIS STORE. By this point, I was having to forcibly restrain myself from beating the woman into a misshapen pulp, but repeated all of the options again, now angry enough to forget my nerves.

In the middle of what was now bordering on a full-blown argument, the woman I can only describe as a spoilt brat smiled brilliantly at me and asked me to wait outside, which I did so, wishing I was a more tolerant person. The period that followed could have been anything from twenty seconds to three hours for all I can tell; all I remember is chewing my nails, twitching nervously every time a door opened and accidentally knocking over a plant. But eventually, the short woman reappeared, now apparently having morphed into a perfectly nice M&S employee, and told me I'd passed. I more or less collapsed into my chair. I was then led into another small room containg a desk, a chair, a small window and - this was new - an official-looking woman with offensively age-inappropriate scarlet hair. It was at this point that we discovered that I could not work the necessary hours.

But despite this, I left the store with a smile on my face, glad to have rid myself of the 'first interview' stigma, glad to have not failed miserably, and glad to be returning to the comfortable familiarity of my school. That is, until I reached the bus stop and realised I had absolutely no idea how to get there...