Dream: Interview With Nessbaum

I'm accompanying my wife, who has a job interview.  We're in the building.  I'm in a hallway at a make-shift wire gate.  My wife has gone on ahead of me.  There is another visitor there – a male.  A female employee of the company is at the gate letting people through.  The visitor speaks with the employee and gets her to slide the gate open part way.  While they're still talking, I slip through, saying, “I know the way.”

I walk down the hallway, looking into rooms, because I really don't know the way.  I figure I'd just find which room my wife is in and enter that room.  After looking in a few doorways, I find her.

I enter the room.  It's more like a sitting room than an office.  The walls are paneled with wood.  The company president is there.  I'll call him “Nessbaum” -- that's what he looks like, a “Nessbaum”.  He's an older white man, with wire-rimmed glasses, short, thick, curly, gun-barrel gray hair, and a professional yet kind and patient disposition.  He's sitting in an overstuffed chair sorting through paperwork that's in his lap.  I remain quiet, trying to not disrupt anything.

Eventually, he's finished with my wife and now it's my turn.  But he has yet more paperwork to shuffle through.  So I get up and ask him if he'd like anything from the cafeteria, a cup of tea perhaps.  He says that he'd like tea, and tells me a particular brand and flavor.

In the cafeteria, I open the cabinet containing the teas.  I don't see the one he mentioned.  I wonder if this is a test.  Perhaps he wants to know how I'll react in an impossible situation.  I ask the other folks who are there, “Do we have blank tea?”  They chuckle and one says, “Oh that's for Nessbaum, right?  He really means blah blah tea.”

Relieved, I select the blah blah tea.  Yet I take one final glance for the tea that Nessbaum asked for.  As I walk back I think about what I'd say if he complains about the incorrect tea selection.  The response comes to me quickly.  I'll say that I decided to trust the advice of the other employees.  If they're honest, you'll get the right tea and all will be well.  But if they're sneaky and try to trick me, then you won't hire me which is just as well since I wouldn't want to work among sneaky dishonest people.  It's the perfect answer, and I'm very pleased with myself.

I return to the room, but Nessbaum isn't there.  Instead a few other people are using the room.  I'm concerned that I took too long and lost my opportunity to interview with him.  I walk further down the hallway hoping to find him, and I find my wife sitting in another room.  “Where's Nessbaum?” I ask.  “He's dead,” is the reply.  I'm shocked and upset.  I explain how I thought of a great reply to why I didn't bring the tea that he asked for.  Then I start to cry.