Hiring Stories: The Girl With a Tattoo (But Not The Dragon One)

“woman wearing round silver-colored watch” by Hanny Naibaho on Unsplash

Recruitment is interesting. New people, new faces, amazing personalities, lost souls…

Every time I introduce people to each other I hear Nokia’s familiar melody in my head that used to blink on our small screens highlighting the phrase “connecting people.”

“Ghukas, connecting people” I say out loud sometimes. Usually, they start working with each other, creating something, some of them marry each other and I have to go to yet another wedding and spend money on some unnecessary shit. I’m kidding, that’s awesome when you see the impact on someone else’s life. That’s why I love my job so much. You change lives, but then . . .

Flashback to several months earlier. We are having a huge job fair at our company. 4000 people, students, shiny bright eyes walking through the company, illuminating the dull walls of our office. I feel like in China (I guess, that’s not racist).

Everyone is looking for a new job or an opportunity. I wink to my department head and raise my bottle of white wine whispering “great job, Anna, great job.” We receive tons of new CVs, most of them useless, cause my standards are high, and I’m trying to look cool, self-establish as a tough guy, escape from loneliness, but that’s not important.

The day ends, everyone is happy, some of them got new jobs, some of them had an opportunity to present themselves, some ate more than they could, because of free food, why not? Sun starts to set and I see people holding wine glasses, acting like they matter, trying to keep their hurting backs straight.

And then one of my colleagues asks me to do her a favor. “Can you find this girl? I only have her name and surname, and I’m not sure how it is written, but we need her.” “Sure thing” I answer, take my coke, walk to my cabinet and start going through socials, trying to find the girl. There are 1288 results with the exact name and more than 2000 with similar names. Fucking Russians, could you be more creative with you names? I spend 55 minutes looking at some random Russian Natashas’(the name is changed), I can’t imagine myself being more productive. I close my overpriced Macbook-clone Surface, sit in my car for 10 minutes in complete silence, turn on the radio and drive home ASAP which in my case is as slowly as possible, while Norah Jones sings her best songs. Damn, her voice is beautiful, beautiful, beautiful, beautiful . . .

Early morning, I find my colleague and tell her I’m losing too much time and I need more details. “Well she had some kind of small tattoo on her neck, probably musical thing, and she said she’s a musician.” “That’s good news,” I thought, this city is very small and I have good connections in the music industry, so I go through Russian socials (VK, OK) and make some calls to my friend musicians. The search narrows rapidly, I go through different categories of music from death metal to State Symphonic Orchestra and finally, I find someone with a tattoo on her neck, in a club, DJ-ing.

Name — checked
Tattoo — checked
Connection to music — checked

This must be her. I don’t think DJs’ are musicians, but well, some people do, so that was misleading at first. Now all I have to find is her details. I find an email, check with Mailtester, it works, I send a message, I wait, I wait, I wait. No answer. I grab my phone and call my DJ friend. “A girl DJ? Oh, no man she sucks, I can get you a decent DJ for your event.” “Yo, I need a shitty one man, find her contacts.”

He sends me SMS, we call her, she’s hired. I never hear of her after. I go back to my daily routine.

Flash forward. I’m sitting with a friend; we’re talking about life and misery, and why everyone is becoming nihilistic. Usual stuff for me. We’re sitting next to the department of the girl I hired months earlier. “Girls in this department look terrible,” she says, I nod my head. “There’s an exception though” I reply, “I hired Natasha, months earlier, she looks fine to me”. Her face changes, I look at her eyes, she looks away, she hides something. She hides something and she doesn’t want me to know it. “What’s wrong with that girl,” I ask. “Well, first of all, she was sitting behind you minutes earlier, and second — she was the reason me and my boyfriend split recently.” We hush, I smile with guilt, like a child who just broke his mom’s favorite vase or something (It always becomes mom’s favorite when you break it. No child ever broke the HATED vase). I try to act cool. I tell her how I found her. “So if it was not your efforts I could still be with him” she states. “Exactly! I indirectly ruined your relationship, but you’ll probably thank me later.”

I try to get forgiveness.

The smoke of our cigarettes fills the awkwardness of the situation and Nokia’s melody is in my head again but this time the sign says “Disconnecting People”.

Life is an interesting thing. I say it out loud but she’s already gone. Swimming in the sea of her memories, I guess. I leave her sitting alone, walk 5 floors, up to my room, try to connect with more people and change more lives. I hope for better.

I hope.

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