Life Is Short (No Pun Intended) by Jennifer Arnold

Author:Jennifer Arnold
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Howard Books

CHAPTER TWELVE

Bill

Hot Rods and Custom Suits

AFTER MY INTERNSHIP WITH Dr. Kopits in Baltimore, I returned to New York, packed up whatever belongings I still had in my ex-girlfriend’s East Village apartment, and moved back to Mom’s house in Port Jefferson. It was time to find a career. Most graduates with a degree in biology in the mid-1990s looked to the pharmaceutical industry, which was exactly what I did.

I sent my CV to every single pharmaceutical company out there—Bayer, Bristol Myers Squibb, Abbott Labs, Forrest Labs, Wyatt, Johnson & Johnson, Merck, Pfizer, Zeneca, SmithKline Beecham, and so on, hoping to land a career in pharmaceutical sales. Besides a BA in biology from New York University, my clinical experience with Dr. Kopits that past summer was enhanced by a junior year internship at the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory in Cold Spring Harbor, New York. The lab was one of the top research institutions in the world in the fields of genetics and molecular biology, and I had the privilege of working with the best scientists out there. I was working in the live animal laboratory, drawing blood from rats, mice, and rabbits, cleaning their cages, and feeding them. I was also assisting the scientists in performing laboratory experiments and dissections.

Once my resumes were out, I looked around for temporary employment while I waited for calls from potential employers. My father had a friend who owned a private security company, and he offered me a job as a security guard, working the midnight shift at an abandoned warehouse in Riverhead. A small aside, this friend, Jay, was a former police officer who had worked with my father and had been my childhood jiujitsu instructor growing up. Anyway, the pay wasn’t very good, but the hours guaranteed that I would be available during the day for interviews for permanent jobs.

I was pretty excited when I got my first couple of requests for interviews. I got a few callbacks, but nothing materialized. At first, I wasn’t surprised to not get a second interview—it happens to a lot of applicants who are starting out with little or no sales experience. But after ten or so interviews, optimistic patience became realistic disappointment. Although I looked great on paper, my in-person meetings ranged from bland and very uncomfortable interactions to blatant prejudice.

One particular interview at a publicly traded pharmaceutical company blew me away. I pulled out one of my new outfits, a gray pinstripe suit, white shirt, and power tie. I drove from my house on Long Island all the way to the company’s corporate headquarters in New Jersey, at least a two-hour drive without traffic from Port Jeff.

My interviewer met me in the lobby and almost immediately I could read by his face that he wasn’t going to give me much time. He was a bottom-tier sales manager with an outwardly cocky manner. From his expression, I could tell he would rather be showing me to the exit door. Nonetheless, he dutifully led me past the elevators

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