Far Outsourced

Story Sent in by Samuel:

Raquel made it clear to me in our first messages that she was between jobs and having a tough time of it. There was one job in particular that she really wanted as an assistant manager of a local theatre.

When we were out together for our first date she was clearly distracted by her prospects, by which I mean she wouldn't shut up about what her job responsibilities would be, when they said they'd let her know if she made the first cut for the position, and what she could read between the lines of their thank-you-for-applying email.

It progressed to a point such that she asked me if I could do her a favor: would I cold-call the theater manager (who I guessed would be the one deciding to hire her or not) and put in a good word for her?

I asked, "Why would they care what some dude off the Internet thinks?"

She said, "You can pretend to be a former boss or something. Can you just do it?"

I explained to her that I felt wrong doing it and that I was sure I'd mess it up somehow, even if I did.

That made her so desperate that she started to cry. Yep. Tears on a first date. So I told her, "What do you want me to say?"

She was already dialing the place up and shoving the phone at me. "Ask for Irene," she said.

"Where did you work for me? For how long? What did you do?" I asked. But then someone picked up.

"Hildemaare Theatre Company, this is Irene."

"Hi, Irene. This is Sam Balunas. Raquel Luna used to work for me. I wanted to recommend her for your theatre company."

"Hi, Sam! Where did she work for you?"

Raquel hadn't given me any information about her past employment. So I said, "Green Mountain Theatre Troupe. She worked for us for a summer. She took tickets, was responsible for our social media outreach... she was great."

"She worked for you for a summer? Do you have a website?"

"Uh... yes. I'll... send it to you. I just really wanted to recommend her. She mentioned she was applying and is a great worker."

"Can you think of anything that would give you reservations about recommending her?"

Yes. Yes. Yes.

"No," I said, "I only wish she could've stayed with us for longer."

After some additional chit-chat, I hung up. Raquel gave me a big hug and she seemed satisfied, despite the fact that I was positive that Irene would be too smart to fall for it.

Sure enough, a week later, Raquel wrote me an angry email to say that she hadn't made the next cut for consideration. Her tone made it sound like I was at fault. I asked her if she wanted to meet up or talk about it over the phone. She never wrote back.