Always dress for success

I knew for sure that she was going to be sent back because of all those jewelries. How was she even surviving with the weight?

Source
I made a trip to memories FM where I was supposed to submit a comedy script for approval when I met with this young lady. She must have been at least 25 years or thereabout so I understood if she was inexperienced but didn't she have friends? Family? Anyone who could ask her to take those jewelries off, at least for that day?

I had heard of the term alte kids but it was my first time seeing one. I was very sure she was in the alte league.

She had nothing less than 5 piercings on each ear lobe and one extra at the top of the ear. There were piercings on either sides of her nostrils and one hugging the small division between the nostrils.

There were also small piercings in her brows and when I spoke to her, there was a small, glittering dot in her tongue.

“Hello, good morning” I greeted her. She was completely bald and in one of the holes on her ears, she had earrings large enough to pass for bangles.

“Good morning” there were also braces in her teeth.

“Do you work here? I'm supposed to see the artistic manager to submit a script to him”

“Oh no, I'm here for an interview”

My jaw dropped in alarm. “Interview looking like this?” I nearly asked but kept my lips shut. I just nodded and went straight to the receptionist who asked me to wait for him as he was in a board meeting. Instead of concentrating on what brought me to the station, I kept stealing glances at that young lady, when the receptionist caught me one time, she exchanged a sad smile with me.

I could tell she too was amazed at the lady's appearance.

I soon began to see other people who I supposed were applicants coming out of a particular room. The lady in jewelry kept stopping them one after the other to have short conversations. At some point she became fidgety.

Shortly afterward, the artistic manager walked into the room I rose to greet him as his face was a familiar one.

“Treasure, good to see you! Let's go to my office for a few seconds, I still have an interview to conduct and it would be a long one” I knew exactly what he was talking about so I followed him into his office. “How are you doing? Have a seat”

“I'm fine, thank you sir. How are you sir?”

“Well I'm exhausted. Been in that board room since 8 am and I can tell you that the last interview we're going to conduct will take an hour or more. That's why I decided to attend to you first”

It was 10 am already. I took the script out of my bag and handed it over to him. After some scanning and deliberation, he asked me to leave saying I should call back in 2 days to know if I would be given the contract.

I thanked him and left.

“Hello,” it was the jewelry lady again. “What were you asked during the interview?” Despite the slightly high air conditioning in the room, I could see sweat marks under her armpits and around the waist line of her trousers. When I even looked closely, I could see colorful beads tucked poorly into her trousers.

I shook my head.

“I didn't come here for an interview. I came to submit a script”

“Oh yeah, right”

I wished her luck and walked away. I couldn't help but wonder what the board of directors were going to say to her and if she would be allowed to work with them no matter the skill she had. I wondered what position she was even applying for.

I felt that graduates, even those who had not received formal education, should be taught how to dress responsibly especially when going to cooperate organizations and for cooperate events such as an interview. There were so many other places to wear such jewelries to, I saw it as utterly irresponsible and unnecessary to appear like that before a cooperate body.

What if she was sent to represent her unit or head a team for an international project? Was that how she would appear?

All those thoughts and more kept flooding my mind on my way back home.

I knew there were only 2 ways that interview could go down; it was either she got sent home with lot of advise on how the average African person was to appear in public or for functions, or she was hired, if her skills were impressive and given restrictive rules on how to dress to work.

Either way, the embarrassment and impression that would come with her appearance wasn't going to be good for her in the long run