Day Seventy-nine - Murder that sound

So, 1998. Right at the beginning of that year I, along with two thirds of the nigh 1500 people that were hired for this supermarket, was unceremoniously let go. For my part, I'm glad It was over, I really didn't like working there. Their 'security' or 'loss prevention team', which I use between quotes because they were no more than a bunch of thuggish morons, had started to call people randomly to their office and accuse them of stealing, and I'm not gonna lie - a lot of people who worked there did steal, and the stelaing went from the expensive perfume or videogame or whatever, to the more casual stealing like people like me did, which was to take advantage of the fact that our warehouses didn't have camera surveillance for the most part, and on the blind spots one could eat a piece of chocolate or cookies or whatever relatively unseen. In the massive freezers where all the yoghurts and butter and that stuff were stored there was no camera surveillance at all, and we certainly did take advantage of that. One night I was summoned to the security office where they tried this shtick on me, but them being relatively stupid, I just laughed them under the table. They accused me of stealing chocolates and eating them in the bathroom, something that, sure, I had done before, but not then and certainly not in the bathroom. Whatever 'proof' they said they had was risible, and after a few minutes of them trying to eke out a confession from me, they just gave up. But anyways, I left, Hugo left, and we kept in touch. 

Maybe one or two months later I was actively looking fo a job again, and I did apply for a bunch of different things then - including for a spot at the 1998 World's Fair, which was hosted where I live. The pay was good, I guess, much better than any pay I'd had so far, so I was definitely up for it. They called me up for a group interview, the irony of it being in the same school where I went for my seventh grade. For no kids to be there, that had to mean that the interviews were held during a small break. I guess I had no idea just how many people would be in this group, but damn, there were dozens of us there. I can only remember one thing from that interview - because of course you can never forget the moments when you humiliate yourself in front of a bunch of other people - and it was when one of the interviewers asked me if I could speak any other language. I said maybe a little bit of french, and of course I was promptly asked something in french, and of course all the french I knew seemed to just disappear from my mind, and I sat there slack-jawed for what seemed like an eternity before the interviewer just gave up on me, and moved to someone else. Oh well, that was that. Hmmm... maybe not...