We are looking for a person under 30 who has a knowledge of and at least 3 years of experience in the following areas:
- Making and repairing handheld fans, including pleated and rigid
- Restoring period handheld fans
- Children’s entertainment and juggling
- Social media management for a small business
Inquisitive mind: required
Investigative experience: not required
If this is you, please call the number below.
The area code is for Paris. I reread the ad three more times. It’s too good to be true. Whoever wrote it may as well have used my meager CV as a template. The vacancy fits my skills and work experience like a glove.
What are the odds?
Besides, €6000 euros for a month of “junior consulting”? Really? On what subject? Repairing period fans, juggling them, and posting about it on social media? That’s the next level of overpaid garbage consultancies our government is so fond of!
And what’s the deal with MINDFUCH? Never heard of it.
So, here’s what I think. This classified ad is an elaborate prank my friends are playing on me for kicks. When I call that number, the person on the other end will ask me a bunch of trick questions, and any answer I give will make me sound like a fool. They’ll record everything, and tomorrow my entire social circle—including Jerome—will be rolling in the aisles at what a gullible half-wit I am.
There’s no way in hell I’m calling that number.
6
LUCIE
My feet are rooted to the floor in front of a closed door. Behind it is a group of people that will ask me questions and decide if I will work for them for one month and take home €6,000.
According to my watch, I still have two minutes to collect my thoughts. I smooth my hair and the pencil skirt I borrowed from Jen, one of my besties. The first thing she asked when I told her about my upcoming job interview at MINDFUCH was if the building had elevators.The fiend!One drunken confession about elevator sex being my hottest fantasy, and she’ll keep finding ways to bring that up until the end of time.
Breathe in, breathe out, Lucie.
No pressure. It’s only a once-in-a-lifetime chance to make a freaking, screaming, blazing 6,000 euros in such a short time. So yeah, no pressure.
Everything happened so fast!
After dinner, I fired up my ancient laptop and typed MINDFUCH into the browser search box. To my surprise,a website came up with a “gouv dot fr” domain name, which only public agencies are allowed to use. I clicked.
The “Our Mission” page was full of imprecise and self-aggrandizing mumbo jumbo. But I understood enough to infer that MINDFUCH—the Modern Institute for the Neat, Diligent, Fair and Useful Conservation of Heritage—is attached to the French Ministry of Culture. Its purpose is to “diligently conserve” cultural objects, everything from tiny pins to vast megalithic sites like Carnac in Bretagne.
The website was messy and confusing, but it seemed legit.
I called the phone number in the ad first thing in the morning. They said to email my CV at once. I did. They replied an hour later, inviting me to come to Paris for an interview later in the afternoon. Today, if possible. They were paying my train fare and a room in a four-star hotel near MINDFUCH.
Dazed, I said yes to the interview. They emailed me a return ticket and a hotel reservation. I got on the fast TGV train and spent the two hours aboard looking up common job interview questions. Upon arrival at the Gare de Lyon, I trotted the twenty minutes to MINDFUCH and entered the building through the revolving door.
And now I’m staring at a door, too nervous to knock. But I must. It’s time.
Someone responds when I rap on the door. “Come in!”
I step into a sunny, spacious meeting room with lots of windows and tech gadgets. One of the walls hosts a huge TV screen. Modern art decorates the other walls.
A surprisingly large group of people observe me from the other side of a long table in the middle of the room. I say hello, wondering why so many busy managers would show up to grill an applicant for a “junior consultant” post.Maybe it’s part of the company culture. Or maybe they aren’t that busy.
