A startled Larry Begbie received a phone call early that summer from the Public Service Commission. As he had the same name as his father, a public servant of long and loyal standing, he assumed it was for him, and called out “Phone, Dad!” No, no, said the voice on the phone, it is you we want.
Thus began an unusual internship for Larry, an unworldly graduate Arts student, by this point so discouraged by the prospect of yet another summer of unemployment that he had wandered down the street to Bargain Bud’s Bazaar to apply for a job as a store clerk and, to his surprise, obtained it. He had not understood that the only qualification for the job was the patience to sit and wait for twenty minutes for a promised interview that never materialized. He had expected questions over the limited extent of his work experience—babysitting his nephews and packing groceries as a volunteer for a food bank—but instead he was asked to begin shelf-stocking right away. The work was mindless, but it was paid and gave him ample opportunity to reflect, his favourite activity. Mr. Greenslade, the assistant manager, was genuinely sorry when Larry had to quit, as he was polite and deferential, but the job he had unexpectedly landed was a chance too good to pass up, his father told him, a ‘career-oriented’ post for aspiring bureaucrats.
Yet Larry could not recall ever having heard of or applied for this post. Two personnel officers who interviewed him must have found his candidacy equally perplexing, even trying.
“I was quite surprised to be called,” he admitted. “I don’t know much about government work.”
“Would you like to work in the public service?” asked the more sympathetic official.
“I don’t know. I don’t really have a clue about what to do in life yet. Is that a problem?”
“We hire for careers,” growled the other interviewer. “What have you specialized in? Social work, political science, economics, law, criminology, engineering, business studies, accounting, agriculture? Those are the careers we hire for.”
“No,” replied Larry, “None of those. I like history, poetry, writing stories and debating philosophical questions to which there are no easy answers. Do you?” Larry, naïve as ever, looked at him eagerly for confirmation.
“I’m not being interviewed here,” he glared. “We don’t employ novelists or philosophers.”
“Would you like,” asked his colleague, “to become, say, a minister or a teacher?”
Larry brightened. “Oh, yes. I have four teachers in my family. It seems a rewarding profession.”
The two men exchanged looks. It was five minutes to lunch. A nod between them, and Larry was to begin work on Monday as a summer assistant to the Head of Inmate Education for the national prison service. He was forever unclear about how or why this had come about.
