She was so caught up in looking at the little dandelion immortalized in resin that she did not hear the door open behind her.
Amelia only became aware of the presence of the other person, when she had already made her way around the desk and was standing right in front of her.
The grey suit, the black thick shirt, hair pulled back in a painful bun, all pointed to the fact that the Director was a stern woman.
Amelia sat up extending her hand.
‘So nice to meet you! Thank you for seeing me!”, she had repeated the words in her mind a hundred times. She had decided that this was the best greeting, simple but positive, expressing the gratitude she really felt.
‘Nice to meet you too! Have a seat!’
The Director’s hand was rougher than Amelia would have expected for a person working in an office all day. Intriguing!
‘So, what can I do for you?’
Faced with having to actually put into words what she needed Amelia flustered. She felt like her entire life will crumble if she did not perform well right now.
In the silence, the Director moved in her chair showing her impatience. Amelia was about to speak when she was cut off.
‘What are you doing here? If you are not prepared you are wasting my time, and trust me I have none to waste!’
The tone was sharp and cut through Amelia’s self confidence like an axe, shattering all her resolution. She started to tremble with frustration. She had prepared, she had everything laid out and right there in her document holder, only the harsh tone and coldness made her unable to react.
The Director watched her closely and when she saw there was no reply to be had she extended a very pointy finger and pressed the intercom.
‘Yes?’, the professional tone came from the other side.
‘Two coffees please, and some of those chocolate cookies I like!’, the voice that uttered the words seemed to belong to a different person than before.
‘Right away!’
‘Come, let’s move to the coffee table.’
She got up and signaled Amelia to join her in a corner of the room, where two armchairs were facing each other separated by a heavy looking coffee table.
If before, Amelia was silenced by her own demons, now she was dumbstruck by the difference in the Director.
Had she been like this all the time and she had not been able to see her? Or she took pity on seeing her so distraught and was just being nice to her now?
After they were sat down with their steaming, perfumed coffees in front of them Amelia felt like she was coming back to herself.
‘Thank you … I am … not sure what to say …’, her voice expressed the pain of her inability.
‘No worries, I know exactly how you feel! A few years ago I was in a very similar situation to yours. I wanted a job badly, this job, and I was desperate to get it, sadly I put so much pressure on myself that when it came to deliver the project I had to deliver I totally bottled it!
I swear I think those poor people thought I had completely lost the ability of speech. But one of them was this old man that saw something the others did not.
He looked through my project and if you can believe it he pretended to read incorrectly one of the sections and asked me to clarify it. This action spoke to a different part of my brain, the one that knew the project in and out, and automatically I started to explain what was the correct info, where the data was from and so on.’
The Director took a sip of her coffee with a melancholic smile.
‘Because he did not dismiss me when I got all stuck, I was able to show what a good match I was for the job and all these years later I am still here giving it my best.’
Amelia was silent.
‘You see?’
She did.
‘Ok. Let’s finish the coffee and move back to the desk.’
Amelia never had any interview like that in her life. She did not get the job, but somehow it was ok, because she had learnt so much about herself, about people, about being alive.
Sometimes, even if we do not get what we so wish for, the journey to there is well worth the effort.