Life’s little lotteries

“What would you do if you won the lottery?”

It was one of those interview questions they put in to catch you out, to find out what motivates you.

“I’ll never work again, I’ll take it easy for the rest of my life,” is not a model answer to that particular question. Jan knew even as she said it that she had blown all chance of the job with that answer. Who knows, maybe on some subconscious level she didn’t want the job, or didn’t think she was worthy, was sabotaging her chances.

She had to go through the last ten tortuous minutes of the interview knowing that she’d blown it.

She had answered the other questions well. ‘Why did you leave your last job?’, they had asked her and she said, “I was made redundant.” She didn’t go on to explain the underlying tensions in the office that had led to her being made redundant rather than anyone else: the manager who blamed her for every mistake, the co-worker she had a brief but messy affair with.

She talked about the benefits her twenty years of experience would bring to the firm, avoiding mentioning how exhausted and drained those twenty years had left her, two decades of the same routine, faking her sing-song telephone smile, feigning interest in the industry, two joyless hours commuting every day on crowded, sweaty trains.

She even gave a model answer to the ‘Tell me about yourself,” question, she didn’t talk about the bottle of wine she got through every night, or about the time she’d taken too many sleeping pills and had to be rushed to hospital. She told instead of the happy, optimistic team player, the business woman who had made a £100,000 sale and written that crucial report in less than 24 hours.

It was just the one question that had let her down, the one question she hadn’t prepared for, the one should couldn’t possibly have prepared for.

Twenty years she’d worked, non stop, hated it mostly, but sacrificed everything for it. Never had kids, focussed on her career instead, only to find that her career was now life on the dole and that her biology was conspiring against her, even if she wanted kids now.

After the interview she went to a wine bar and spent money she didn’t have drowning her sorrows, smothering the disappointment.

Two bottles in, her mobile rang, not a number she recognised, probably the interviewer phoning to say hard luck.

She composed herself enough not to slur ‘hello’.

“You’ve got the job,” the interviewer told her. "we were really impressed by you. We particularly liked your answer to the lottery question, we love your honesty."