Don't Hire Me

I will start by forgetting to arrive for the interview. Three days later I will call to "confirm" the interview date/time/address/company. I will arrive at the rescheduled interview with the interview details post-it still stapled to my forearm. I will ask for your name three times and the next day when I drop in the resumé I meant to bring I will ask for "the guy that did the interviews".

I have always figured I was just too lazy to bother remembering most stuff but I have been thinking recently that maybe I am just built a little differently. Now I really don't like the idea of self diagnosis or of labeling people. ...but here I go.

I have done some extended research over the last 0.01 days and have a couple of likely possibilities. Amnesia was the obvious first choice, source amnesia in particular and maybe memory distrust syndrome. I find it trivial to remember facts, numbers and solid concepts but context and human details are lost to me very rapidly, often in seconds. I figure that my frequent déjà vu experiences might be related but I don't know how that helps. I have thought before that I may be a little on the autistic spectral side on account of the difficulty I have with the subtleties of personal communication with most people and the unnatural talent I have for "guessing" the right answers to some kinds of puzzles. I haven't really found anything that matches my strange set of strengths and weaknesses. That's ok with me though I guess. I prefer to think that everyone is unique and dropping them into neat categories is, at best, limiting their potential.

The other morning I saw someone that I know in the lobby of the building where I work. All I had was a flicker of recognition. I thought maybe he just looked like someone else that I know. Maybe he was a new member of my team that I had only seen from a distance? We shared a lift and he started chatting to me. It wasn't long before I had to admit that I had no idea where I knew him from. It turns out that he has just started a job with another team in my building. He had to explain to me that six years ago we worked together for six months. That doesn't sound so bad right? I mean I've worked with a lot of people since then. Easy enough to misplace one team member right? Well it wasn't so much a team as a partnership. He was my right hand man in a workshop staffed by only two people, him and me. ...for six months. Aye aye aye. I asked for his name twice but right now I haven't a clue what it is.

On the plus side having a partially 7 second memory has been a bonus in solving complex problems. In the space of ten minutes of working on a problem I will have thought about the problem from a dozen different angles. It's kind of like forgetting my train of thought and starting over but always from a different perspective. Assumptions are tested multiple times and facts are restated. It seems to make me a worthwhile addition to brainstorming groups too.

As much as I love talking about myself I think I should observe the clarity paradox at this point.