The Boiler Room

aka. Ice, Ice Baby
Humans have created some godawful situations in their lifetime: War, terrorism, and fast food kitchens (it's greasy. Very, very greasy). However, none of these can compare to the sheer mind-numbing torture that is: The job interview.

You walk into the office with the nervous posture that would put the Hunchback of Nostre Dame to shame. You nervously ask the reception lady (it's always a lady) where to go. Without even looking up, she condemns you to the row of chairs; half of them filed with equally nervous job applicants. You can just see the bricks dropping from their pants. The reception lady gets back to her tasks, wiping her hands clean of your presence.
They all look up at you. Upon realising that you are yet another applicant, they give you The Evil Eye. They shuffle themselves away from your direction, paranoid that you will, for some reason, steal their resume notes, even though you have absolutely no use of some crappy work experience job in some miscellaneous office filing papers to nowhere.
As soon as you take your seat, it becomes freezing cold. This is the effect of The Cold Shoulder. Everyone sticks to themselves, never speaking a word, never generating small talk, even though you all are brothers, bonded by interview trauma, about to be led like lambs to the slaughter. Even those who do bother making small talk are so nervous, that you can't understand a word of what they say, only hearing jittery gibberish.
You stare at the blank walls, somehow hypnotised by the emptiness. Paranoid thoughts pass through your head, transforming the inevitable-yet-unintentional truancy of the interviewer into a test of courage and faith.

Finally, after everyone else has walked the green mile to their interview, you are called. You flinch, surprised and horribly scared. You shuffle that little bit too quickly into the interview room, filled only with a bookshelf holding smelly 50-year old books, a poster with a rock climber and the word 'Courage', an empty chair, a bare desk and the interviewer. There is no natural light to speak of, only a single 75 Watt light bulb filling the darkness, yet not shielding you from the inevitable darkness of the upcoming events.
The interviewer stares at you, observing and over-analysing you as you sit down. They introduce themselves. You smile (badly) as you shake their hand, repeating their name over and over again in your head. They crap out a tangle of lies, claiming that you are important to their business, that you don't have to be so tense. Nothing could be further from the truth. You've already forgotten their name.
You give them your resume, your hand trembling like there's no tomorrow. You begin to panic as you over-over-analyse one of their blinks as a look of disappointment. They finally finish, saying that it looks good. You break out into another sweat as they put your beloved resume into a manila folder, disposing of it like a used tissue.
You stress like a man facing a shooting squad as they start shooting the Questions at you. "What can you bring to our business?" "Why do you want to work here" "Can you see yourself working here?". You blindly reply with answers that you spent all last night rehearsing in your head and to your rather pissed off family/roomies/significant other. Then they pull out the big guns: The absolutely worthless metaphorical questions. "If you were an animal, which one would you be?" "What would you do if ?” You stammer, pause, pause and pause some more, the awkward silence permeating the air like your sweat. You finally stutter out a reply that a 6 year old kid would make. They write down some notes. You begin to have a nervous breakdown.

At long last, you shake their hand again and farewell them. You get out of that room as quickly as you can. As soon as you step back into civilisation, you are ecstatic. You wish your other rivals the "best of luck", almost hugging and kissing them in your present state. They nervously reply and resume their hypnotic state, staring the wall infront of them.
You get home. And then it hits you, The Inevitable Lament. You lost that night's sleep regretting nearly everything that happened in that interrogation/interview.
You lose more sleep over the next couple of days sitting at the phone. Sitting, waiting, lamenting, hoping for that inevitable call...