Today I went on an interview for a fairly important position. I was pretty excited about it. If I must chain myself to a desk again, it may as well be a pretty desk with a comfy chair and a phone with call display so I can screen my calls and then claim later I was really really busy. The interview started off well enough. Potential Boss Person seemed impressed by my background, experience and soon enough it was as if we were having a conversation – albeit a formal one – not an interview. This is always a good sign.

But then I began to notice that every word that came out of Potential Boss Person's mouth was four letters long. Now, believe me when I say that I'm no prissy little uptight wallflower. It's true that I really do appreciate a relaxed, informal work atmosphere where one can forget that one is doing something one loathes with people one wouldn't associate with if one weren't getting paid to do so. However, it does seem to me that a certain level of decorum should be kept.

I mean, does Potential Boss Person think we're friends after a mere 15 minutes of conversation about my tasks and duties? Would Potential Boss Person turn into one of those bosses who get off on having a gay underling so that advice on romance and clothing can be tacitly built into the job description? If she talks like that when she's happy, how would she talk if I did something that made her angry – which I would most definitely do: I know my own personality very well. Plus it's just plain ugly. Would it be such a stretch to scrape your brain to find more imaginative and precise way of expressing yourself?

All Potential Boss People seem to forget that while they're sending Potential Slaves'n'Serfs into diarrhea-inducing panics, they are also supposed to impress on us how magnificent it is to work for them. Perhaps they forget that we need to know that we're going to be happy about the situation that is going to take up almost as much time as sleeping does. We forget to, and as a consequence settle for all sorts of horrible jobs that give us ulcers and cause us to have early mid-life crises.

Then there's that interview I went on years ago where Very Rude Potential Boss Person kept answering his phone every two minutes during the interview. During it. When he made a call of his own, I got up and left. I wasn't angry (that's a lie – I was a little angry); it just seemed to me that there would be an immense personality conflict if I got the job. I was simply treating him with the same courtesy he was treating me with. Then, Head Hunter of Doom and Evil who had gotten me the interview told me she wouldn't work with me anymore unless I apologized to Very Rude Potential Boss Person. She hadn't found me a job in six months (luckily for my wallet, I had a job at the time – unlike now) so it didn't seem to me to be such a lethal threat.

Back to today – I spent the rest of the day seeking out various episodes of the Simpsons and incarnations of Star Trek on TV and playing this educational game that I found on the BBC web page, of all places, where you pretend to be a baby dinosaur and you eat caterpillars and scorpions and get eaten by other bigger, meaner dinosaurs. I am not making this up. (pretend you think this is interesting and click on "Big Al Game". "Sea Monster Adventure" is fun/frustrating too). It is important to continue one's education during times of unemployment.