Job Interview and one of the biggest shocks of my life

12/4/11

We have got into travel mode so rising before 10am is somewhat of a struggle so imagine James needing to be ready for a phone job interview at 9.30am. Well he managed to be ready and I was dispatched to sit down stairs. An hour passed and I thought that the interview was taking a long time but thought nothing of it. A little time latter James come clomping down the stairs. Not known for his grace the noise was even louder as he was stamping his feet as no one had rung him. There then followed a few emails and a series of attempts to call New Zealand and eventually 2 hours late the interviews called on the hotel phone.

James raced to the room which at 68 stairs made him out of puff. In the mean time the owner explained in accented English to the interviewers that they needed to ring back as he was on the wrong phone to transfer the call. Then horror of horror he put the phone down. There was then a period of intense staring at the phone whilst 5 minutes elapsed. Just at the point of having a heart attack the phone rang and the call was put through to our room. James thought the interview went well and the intervieers also enquired if James would be interested in a management position. James was unsure but left his options open by emailing after the interview to say he would be happy to discuss any positions that were vacant. A decision shall be made whilst we are on our trek so watch this space.

After a quick light lunch we headed over to old Hanoi restaurant for a cooking lesson. Here we made a dipping sauce, spring rolls, king rice, Vietnamese fish and sweet potato soup for desert (quite tasty actually). We have the recipes so shall, subject to availability of ingredients, we will cook this when we are in New Zealand and failing that at home.

Upon returning to our hotel I checked my emails and had one of the biggest shocks of my life. The email was from my work colleague Anna who I had shared an office with for the last 8 months. The email went a bit like this…

“do you remember we had two volunteer girls working on inputting members to the membership database working with me from December to March? One of them was called Sara Collinson, she was tall and thin with dark hair tied back, a nose stud and dressed like a student. She was very inquisitive and a bright young girl who asked us many questions about the Trust? Well ... she was an undercover journalist, filming us (yep, both you and I) She posed as a volunteer throughout the hospital and there was another man who posed as a bank porter doing the same secret filming. They were filmed for dispatches and the program aired last night at 8 p.m. on channel 4. It was supposed to be about the coalition government and the spending cuts but did not really depict that, it is frightening the way she engaged with everyone and the way that I trusted her. I feel like I have had my privacy violated but they are legally allowed to show you on TV if they blur your face out to protect your identity (although it doesn’t)”

I am not one for being a drama queen but I actually felt sick when I opened the email and I can only imagine what it must have felt like for Anna waiting for it to be aired it must have been truly horrid, bowel clenching fear. This is the type of "oh shit" moment you never want in work. This person had been in our office for four months. We had been nice to her and made her feel welcomed so I felt a little betrayed.

I think neither of us is so discrete as to directly slag off the Trust to a volunteer but at the same time we are fairly frank and with editing that could have been interesting. Fortunately Anna informed me that neither Anna or I were on film but the Trust certainly was and it did not come off to well. I emailed Alice for in impartial overview and she provided a very complete synopsis which settled my mind further. Anyway not quite what you expect… hopefully it means statistically that I have had my fill with undercover journalist for my career.