My Parenting Skills Are Called Into Question Yet Again

Today Connie has an interview at H&M for a summer job, but I don't think she's got it. She says everything went well until the manager asked her whether there was anything that really annoyed her about people. (The Boss never asked me that!)

The trouble with Connie is that she's so truthful that she can't understand the point of those interview questions to which the only correct answers are lies, such as what she should have said on this occasion:

"I am very tolerant and really like dealing with the general public."

But Connie doesn't say anything of the sort. Her argument is that any interviewer worth his or her salt would assume that a candidate who answered with such bullshit must be a compulsive liar, and should therefore be avoided.

As a result, she takes the same approach to interviews as she does to life in general: tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. (I have strong suspicions that this characteristic may be linked to Asperger's, as well as an inability to judge when to explain oral sex to an elderly relative.)

So Connie's answer to the H&M manager goes something like this:

"Well, one thing really, really annoys me -"

"What?" says the (presumably-incredulous) manager.

"When someone has thin hair and their ears poke out through it."

Connie says the interview ended very shortly thereafter.

I tell her not to get her hopes up, and manage to keep a straight face for all of thirty seconds, before I start laughing. To her credit, Connie joins in straight away. That's one of the best thing about her - she can always see the funnier side of her crazier behaviour, though I am seriously starting to wonder about how employable either of my children are.

I blame Penelope Leach.* I knew I should have accepted that old copy of Dr Spock* that Mum kept trying to give me instead.


*Penelope Leach: Childcare guru to we babyboomers. Quite possibly responsible for our pathetic need to be friends rather than parents to our children.

*Dr Spock: Usurped by Penelope Leach, and nothing to do with Star Trek.