Cheap Trick

It had been an epic week of recruiting for me.

Monday: ORD-LGA
Tuesday: Interview #1 in New Jersey, EWR-ORD in the afternoon
Wednesday: Full day of conference calls
Thursday: Digital marketing webinar
Friday: Interview #2 in Chicago, ORD-LGA in the evening (missed my first flight, would like to give a shout out to the CTA for taking well over an hour to get me from the north side of the city to O’Hare)
Saturday & Sunday: Threw some alcohol at the problem with the help of my New York crew. Unemployment seems a lot funnier three or four drinks in!
Monday: Interview #3 in Connecticut

There’s obviously a lot of material to work with here, but I’m going to proceed straight to Interview #3.

I had opted to fly out a few days ahead of time so that I could see friends in NYC over the weekend (and also because I had learned that it is a very poor idea to fly out the day of). Since the company was located in Connecticut, my plan was to take the train out of the city in the morning and then take a cab from the train station to the office. I got to Grand Central well before my train was scheduled to depart so I had plenty of time to grab a breakfast sandwich and coffee and enjoy some quality people watching. (Sadly, Serena Van Der Woodsen was not spotted.) At the appointed time, I hopped on the train and about an hour later I was in Connecticut. I got off the train and as scheduled, there was a cab waiting for me. I confirmed the address with the cabbie and 20 minutes later I was being dropped off at the front door of the office.

I’ll skip over the details of the actual interview; it was fairly typical and therefore does not lend itself to an entertaining story. You know what wasn’t standard ops though? My cab ride back to the train station.

The company was located equidistant between two train stations. I had arrived at one station in the morning, but I was going to depart from the other station to return to the city. The company had called a cab ahead of time so after wrapping up my last interview, I walked outside and got into the waiting “cab”. I say “cab” because it was basically a regular car with a taxicab decal on the window and a meter that was likely a losing submission in a fifth grade science fair. The cabbie’s hair was about as long as mine which immediately creeped me out. Men should not have longer hair than me, end of story.

My cabbie was extremely chatty. He asked me where I was from and when I told him Chicago, he lit up like a Christmas tree.

Cabbie: Hey, have you ever been to Rockford? My parents used to live there and that’s where Cheap Trick is from. Do you like Cheap Trick?
Me: Yeah, I know Rockford and I actually saw a Cheap Trick show a couple of years ago.
Cabbie: I’ve been to over 90 shows. How many times have you seen Cheap Trick?
Me: Oh, just that one time.

The cabbie then proceeded to launch into a graphic account of all of the times that he had seen Cheap Trick play. I zoned out for a bit but then I looked out the window and noticed that we were driving through what appeared to be a small subdivision. Was this really the way to the train station? All of a sudden it hit me that I had no clue where we were and that I was all alone in the car with the cabbie. And we appeared to be headed AWAY from civilization. I checked my watch and realized that we had been driving for just over 20 minutes. Where was that stupid train station?

OH MY GOD. They were going to find me in the woods, gagged with an old Cheap Trick concert tee.

I grabbed my phone and frantically tried to pull up my location. Just as my panic was reaching a crescendo, we arrived at the train station. It was the most beautiful place that I had ever seen. I paid the cabbie and all but fell over in my haste to get out of the cab. I’m happy to report that the rest of my commute passed without incident. Aaaaaand scene.