How not to interview for a spy job.
Bronwen was the kind of woman who always seemed perplexed. It wasn’t so much that she was unable to understand the world around her, but more that unusual things just seemed to happen to her. She liked to eat cheese sandwiches, and she always insisted on having dessert on a Sunday night and while she would never be able to pinpoint when such curious happening began to happen to her, she was sure it all began in 1994, not long after her 7th birthday.
Today though was not a day for reminiscence, as Bronwen left her small apartment and set out for a job interview. She had been working in retail for many years, and she had applied for a cryptic advertisement for workers who were good at solving clues. She had, on reading the advertisement, declared herself a puzzle boxand had concluded it must have been a recruitment for the National Spy Network. With a furtive look about her, Bronwen had raised her lime green umbrella and set off. The heavy cloud cover threatened a downpour, and having spent longer than usual working on her make-up that morning, Bronwen was not prepared to risk her face falling off and staining her white blouse.
At the corner of her street, Bronwen stood by the lamp post waiting for a pause in the traffic allowing her to cross over to her favourite little coffee spot. When she had her interview booked in, Bronwen was told that she should go about her day and wait to be contacted. With that in mind, she lingered on the side of the street, making herself as visible as possible to all pass traffic, but eventually, she walked into Annie’s Coffee House and asked for her regular order, taking a seat in one of the booths at the front of the shop. She didn’t have to wait for long, however, before she was handed a tall take-away cup, accompanied by a smile by Annie herself. On taking her first sip, Bronwen noticed her coffee cup had been graffitied with what appeared to be a labyrinth of lines. It of course led to the woman raising her eye brows theatrically and looking around, but she noticed nothing out of place.
With that realisation, she stood and began to travel the route marked on the maze of lines. Back on the street, she became a spectacle, as she held up her coffee cup only inches from her eyes with one hand, whilst still balancing her lime-green umbrella in the other. She had such intense concentration on the map on her cup, that she didn’t even notice the specials board outside the local butcher. She didn’t even notice a new pair of strappy sandals in the shoe boutique she liked to splurge at, or that a new restaurant had opened, The Happy Goose, where her favourite sushi shop had been. In short, she was like a runaway train and nothing would stop her from her final destination. She was still confident that she was going to be a spy, if only she could follow the clues and find the interviewer.
Bronwen continued like this for another fourteen minutes and then she found herself turning up the driveway of a fairly derelict home. The gutters were falling off, and the front door was askew and in urgent need of painting. This was the kind of den of danger and iniquity that she should normally have been scared off as the entire vignette seemed to insist that she’d had her tetanus shot recently. Yet, Bronwen continued up the driveway, unaware of where her steps had taken her, her steely eyes glued to the map on her coffee cup. As she stepped around discarded scrap metal and broken beer bottles, she found herself approaching a rather dilapidated toolshed.
Standing outside the shed, Bronwen finally stopped and looked around. Before going in, she wanted to make a good impression, so she put away her umbrella and zhuzhed (had to google the spelling of that a few times to find the right term!) her hair. She was ready to step into the shed and into a new career. With a confident stride, she unlatched the tin door and let herself in. She then took a seat at a stool by the bench and, believing she had followed the map to her final destination, she finally took the cup to her mouth to finish drinking her coffee, remaining blissfully unaware that the National Spy Network, in all probability, was not headquartered between a rusty handsaw and a garden rake.