Letters of Decline: Four Tales of Job Interview Horror

JOB INTERVIEWS: HORROR’S ULTIMATE FRONTIER Everyone who’s been a finalist for a job has felt it: the sweaty brow, the nervous catch in the voice, the panic when asked a question you can’t answer … Job interviews are the hopelessly flawed method industrial society employs to select willing participants in the soul-crushing monotony of wage labor, a process governed by bias, guesswork, and the arbitrary whims of bored, resentful hiring managers. This bleak netherworld is examined in this volume by four of the most distinctive new voices in horror fiction today: a new company in a decrepit mill town seems to offer the promise of upward mobility, if you can just pass the interview … a woman learns exactly what she’s willing to do to land a job in a place with a good dental plan … an out-of-work recluse comes face-to-face with his own past in an unspeakable showdown with a mysterious interrogator … and one baffled man sits on the other end of the hiring desk as a parade of horribles shambles before him. Sit down. Relax. Bring your references and samples of your work. We’ll leave time at the end for questions and hopeless prayers.