The Supervisor

Jan looked at his watch. It was 2:55. His interview was at 3:00 and he was nervous. He wasn’t sure who would be interviewing him, but the interview itself was supposed to take three hours. He pulled the business card out of his pocket and checked it one more time. The HR person he had asked for was Crystal Tucker and the security desk had yet to get a hold of her.

He pulled out his laptop, fired it up, and checked his PowerPoint presentation one more time. It covered the basics of what he thought an Art Director’s position meant and linked to his supporting examples of work. He was a little worried that he didn’t have enough examples or maybe not the best examples to show. He had been in graphic design for 15 years, climbing from junior designer to creative director and although he knew he was over experienced for the job, there weren’t a lot of opportunities out there these days. That made this one pretty important.

He put his laptop in sleep mode and returned it to his messenger bag as a woman approached him. He rose from the designer leather chair and put his hand out. “You must be Crystal,” he said. She shook his hand and apologized for being out of contact. Apparently, the print side of the company was going through a round of layoffs and she had too many exit interviews to schedule.

“You’ll be meeting with three different groups,” she said. “The designers you would be managing, mid level management, and upper management. We should have you out of here by 6:00.” She walked him back by the security desk and had him sign in and wait for his visitor’s badge. Once he was through, Crystal took him to an elevator bank and pushed the up button.

When the elevator opened, several people filed out, whispering amongst themselves. Crystal led him into the empty elevator and asked him if he had any questions about the interviews ahead. “Well,” he said, “I’d like to know about the folks I’ll be interviewing with. What can you tell me about them?”

Crystal punched the button for the second floor and turned to face him. “The first interview is with the designers. There are nine of them, seven are focused primarily on ads and two are responsible for the actual design of the online pages for the newspaper.”