I had a job interview a couple of weeks ago. It was for a job closely related to my own department, so close that we work with the same programs, the same customers, and I’m familiar with all of their processes. Just getting an interview is kind of a big deal; I work at a huge corporation, so every job gets dozens (if not hundreds) of applicants. Anyway, my resume is good, a friend in that department send a recommendation, and the interview went well.

And I didn’t get it.

I found out today that I didn’t get it. Honestly, I was prepared for this, for no reason other than a lot of things just don’t pan out for me, work-wise. It’s one of those pieces of my life that never seems to come together, and I don’t often get what I want. Call me a natural pessimist, I don’t care, but I don’t ignore history. Because of the way my company is structured, all internal applicants must get feedback about the interview if they didn’t get the job. When I went to my “did I or didn’t I?” meeting today and found out I didn’t, the feedback was that I could not have done better in my interview.

No, seriously. I could not have done better. I was actually the best interview they had for the position, according to the hiring manager, and I “scored off the charts.” She said it had been a tough decision and she felt bad choosing someone else, but that my lack of actual accounting experience was what stacked the decision against me. She meant that I hadn’t been an accountant before or studied accounting, because although there are a number of individuals in the department who haven’t and didn’t, they are apparently looking for different qualities now, and the position went to someone who has no experience in any part of the job except the accounting part. He actually has an accounting degree, which is fine if you want to work for NASA’s accounts payable department, but in real life, no one who has an accounting degree should get a job in anything. Because they’re boring. They’re crap to work with and have no sense of humor and are certainly not used to getting yelled at every day, which is something the job requires and a skill at which I have had years of experience. The hiring manager giving me this feedback was really very nice – at one point, I told her that if she kept saying such nice things about me, she’d actually make the whole experience of not getting the job even worse, seriously, it’s like getting kicked in the nuts by someone who’s crying – but I’m still disappointed. I thought I was a good fit. And I still didn’t get it. I have to stay where I am and dread waking up every day, and my boss will continue to be an asshole and FUCK I hate my fucking job.

There’s really nothing left to do at this point but sit in the dark, grind my teeth, and wait for the apocalypse. Thankfully, there’s a show on the National Geographic channel about Doomsday Preppers, and I’m sure I could learn some valuable survival tactics from it.

What’s interesting about the doomsday preppers on Doomsday Preppers is that while all of them are clearly nuts, each of them has their own specific expectation of doomsday. One woman has made plans for her cat in case of an oil crisis. Two families have prepared for the apocalypse by way of complete financial collapse. Another believes it will come after widespread terrorist attack, one man is waiting for an EMP explosion to wipe out the transportation system, and others are waiting for natural disasters such as killer earthquakes, polar shift, solar flares, and, in one case, a supervolcanic eruption, which, at this point, is really no more insane than the rest of them. Perhaps the most insane thing is that no one so far has planned for a zombie apocalypse. If I’ve learned anything from television (and I’d like to think that I have), a zombie apocalypse is the most likely scenario and the only one I am at all prepared to face (and by face, I mean “hide in terror until the swarms make any hope of survival impossible, at which point I will overdose on a stockpile of heroin and die”…and no, government IP’s that hit this blog, I have not begun to stockpile the heroin at this time. Really. I own zero heroin).

While I in no way expect a world without end forever and ever amen, I still don’t spend a large portion of my time thinking about the apocalypse, let alone actively planning for it to the point of filling my backyard pool with tilapia or stockpiling bullets in a 700-square foot apartment. Okay, so I don’t have a backyard pool or a 700-square foot apartment, but I also don’t have massive problems with reality, either, so I guess I just don’t fit in with the prepper lifestyle.

It’s not that I want to, either. I have no real plans to survive any kind of apocalypse, because come on, what else besides dying is the point of the apocalypse? What kind of fun is it going to be wearing gas masks and stressing out and eating canned food every day while burying your own poop so as not to attract the attention of scavengers? No fun! No fun is the answer to that question. It’s not worth it to survive the apocalypse, because not only do you have to live in a constant state of fear, anxiety, and whatever emotion takes over when a cat freaks out and expresses their anal sacs, but you get to have the Doomsday Preppers for neighbors.

And those people are assholes.