Keeping It Professional

Every once in a while I am asked to help my boss interview a prospective new teacher. This is mildly interesting and only takes about 20 minutes of my time, but can end up being incredibly stressful and, at times, aggravating.

First, I always feel a little awkward because the only reason I am qualified to do this is because I can speak English fluently. And the other person can't. I also feel awkward because my boss sits in the corner and watches....judging. No smiles.

Before each interview, my boss, Chuckles, likes to come into my classroom, close the door, and tell me in broken English her fist impressions of the interviewee. And her "first impressions" are actually just reasons why she doesn't like the person - and why I shouldn't like them either.
[To clarify, my boss is also the person who voices her disappointment each year when she receives information about the incoming foreign teacher and they aren't blonde. And straight up doesn't like non-Japanese Asians.]

So before the last interview Chuckles cornered me alone in the office and tells me, "He is a man."

Yes, this is her opening statement. I am supposed to infer that the "he" in question is the person I will later interview.

"...Oh really?"

"I have never hired a man."

"...Oh really?"

"Yes!" she says proudly. Short pause, then she adds, "I don't like him."

"Because he's a man?"

"Ahahahahaha. No!"

End of conversation. Like most with her, I am not sure what to take away from it, other than I think she doesn't want me to say his English is good. Later, my Japanese co-workers come into the office and we begin discussing the situation. The both tell me that Chuckles told them he smells funny, and so she doesn't want to hire him.

For a woman over 50 she has really mastered the art of sounding like a girl in junior high school.

So I go into the interview and talk for 20 minutes with a really nice man who did not smell funny at all and had perfect grammar, but was so nervous he constantly had to pause mid-sentence to stop shaking. He asked me great questions, and was obviously eager to be a teacher. At the end I shook his hand, said good job, and went back into the office.

Chuckles comes in with a disdainful look on her face. She starts speaking Japanese to my co-worker and in there I hear, "blah blah blah Leah-sensei 'Good Job' AHAHAHAHA!"

"What? I wasn't supposed to say good job? He was trying so hard!"

"AHAHAHAHAHAHA!" She's laughing too hard to respond to me now.

Thanks boss.

She looks at me and manages to say between bouts of laughter, "Don't recommend."

So there it was, my decision was made for me, by the worst English speaker in the whole school and (I can't help but feel like) for all the wrong reasons. But then, such is business in Japan.