I Traded 5 Months of Humiliation For a Life-Changing Lesson About Success (& You Can Have It)
I Traded 5 Months of Humiliation For a Life-Changing Lesson About Success (& You Can Have It)
This story contains a vomit, a mattress factory and a trip to Amsterdam.
FACT: I hold the WORLD RECORD for the fastest-ever job offer and rejection.
Please, don’t applaud. I’m a normal guy. I put my pants on just like you - quietly, so I can sneak out of my neighbour’s bedroom without them realising I was there.
17 seconds.
That’s how much time elapsed between a handshake and hearing, “You’ve got the job. See you on Monday”, and me walking outside to send a “Sorry, I quit” text.
Does this make me a business genius? Am I going to appear on an episode of Shark Tank? Will I wear a wig and red sequin dress while Elon Musk seduces me on a SpaceX rocket to Mars?
I’m up for one of those things (but I won’t say which). 😉🚀
Despite the outcome, that job opportunity taught me a lesson that’s made my life better, grown my bank account, and opened up opportunities around the world - and it’s a lesson that can do the same for you.
So, in this article, you’ll find three things:
A short (humiliating) story
A life-changing lesson
An invitation to do something awesome
A short (humiliating) story
I was 25 and unemployed.
After five years of working late nights and weekends in Sydney’s bar scene, I resigned from slinging piss and set myself the goal of “getting really good at Xbox”.
It turns out there’s a limit to how much vomit you can scoop up with a broom in a poorly lit pub bathroom, and by God, I’d found it.
If that career trajectory (or the attempt to sweep up vomit with a broom) wasn’t a giveaway, I’m not the brightest sandwich in the shed.
I once got my ponytail caught in a car window as a teenager. Embarrassingly, it wasn’t an automated window. It was a wind-up. I was in control, and still managed to fall foul of the crank like a developmentally challenged Rapunzel.
But life isn’t all long hair and crank windows (THANK GOD). It’s a blank canvas waiting to be coloured. Not literally, obviously, which is great because I’ve got zero artistic ability.
If I tried to paint a 1400s-inspired Renaissance oil painting, I’d end up with a childlike stick figure. And when I want to scratch out a quick stick figure, I end up with a stunning 1400s-inspired Renaissance oil painting! Frustrating.
With art out of the question and no job to hold me down, I decided to use 5 months of unemployment to apply for as many jobs as possible—as long as I was wildly unqualified for them.
The plan was to collect an arsenal of job interview stories where I tried to bullshit my way into a role. Naturally, they’d realise I was not qualified and never call me back.
I wasn’t doing this to kill time (I was spending most of my time “getting really good at Xbox”). The big-picture vision was to write about the experience and pitch it to publishers.
I thought it would be a funny commentary on the Millennial experience. If all went well, it would sell a million copies, be turned into a film, and change my life forever.
That’s how I ended up sitting in the front office of a Sydney warehouse, interviewing for a job at a mattress factory.
The job interview:
“Do you have much experience with mattresses?” the very serious-looking interviewer asked me.
“Yes,” I replied with a face as straight as John Travolta’s sexuality, “I’ve slept on them thousands of times.”
He didn’t laugh. I thought about repeating the line louder a second time, but I put the joke to bed and let it slide.
“Hmmmm,” he said, looking down at my CV.
“Hmmmm,” I replied, having read somewhere you should mimic people’s actions as a psychological trick.
He tapped the desk with three fingers.
*Rrrap* *Rrrap* *Rrrap*
I put my own hand on the edge of his desk and did the same.
My psychological game was so on point he was either going to give me the job or fall in love with me. Both of which would have made a good story. I was open to the possibilities of the world. Bedding a mattress maker is the type of pun writers spend a lifetime looking for. I felt alive.
Truthfully, I knew I wouldn’t get the job. I didn’t have any experience making mattresses, and there’s a painfully strong argument that I haven’t done a hard day’s work in my life.
Despite this, the stern-looking interviewer was powering through questions, and I answered them as best I could. With each underwhelming answer, I added another mental paragraph to my passion project—tentatively titled ‘Alexander Goes To Job Interviews He Is Not Qualified For’.
It’s not my most creative title. Then again, in hindsight, turning up to job interviews, wasting people’s time, making a fool of myself, and going home doesn’t seem like much of a creative gem either.
After 40-odd minutes of fumbling through answers and mimicking his body language like the world’s most idiotic mime (to be fair, they all are), he thanked me for coming in.
Sliding my chair back and standing tall, I extended my hand and asked the question that I hoped would end each chapter of ‘Alexander Goes To Job Interviews He Is Not Qualified For’…
“So, do I have the job?”
“You’ve got the job”, he replied. “See you on Monday.”
A life-changing lesson
Here’s the lesson…
✨When you win over the mattress maker, you win at life ✨
Don’t take that advice literally. You’ll run into very few mattress makers in your life. Possibly none. But there’s a powerful lesson buried deep in the idiocy of my passion project.
If my short-lived career at the mattress factory can teach you anything (a stretch, I know), you’re capable of more than you think. And when you put yourself in foreign, uncomfortable and even frightening positions, you open yourself up to new levels of success.
To be clear, this isn’t a derivative “If You Don’t Ask, You Don’t Get” message.
You know that already. You’ve heard that advice 46,378 times. The problem with this type of empty “life advice” is that it means nothing without context. It’s not completely wrong, but it lacks any practical framing.
Sometimes, asking is the worst thing you could do.
If you ask your boss to switch salaries, the outcome won’t be positive. If you ask your partner to sleep with their sister, you’ll ruin family Christmas. If you ask your neighbour if you can watch them sleep at night with your pants off, they’ll say no (which is why I do it so quietly). The universe doesn’t work on a simple transactional scale.
This advice is about identifying the most important areas of your life and moving the goalposts so that asking for something beyond your capabilities or expectations becomes normal.
I’m talking about things like your:
Education: Apply for a course that interests you, even if you lack experience.
Job: Apply for a role that excites you, even if you’re not fully qualified.
Partner: Ask out the hot girl (or guy), even if you think they’re “out of your league”.
According to a study conducted by the job postings website Indeed, 4 out of 5 women received a wage increase… after requesting one.
On the flip side, the Harvard Business Review cites a study of a thousand working men and women that showed the top reason for not applying for a job was “I didn’t think they’d hire me since I didn’t meet the qualifications” (42%).
These examples show both ends of this issue — in the proper context, aiming higher than usual is a path to success, just as staying in your lane slams a door in your face.
The goal is to find a sweet spot 25% above what you’d typically target. Then, channel your inner idiot interviewing at a mattress factory and consider that your new normal.
Anything above 25% and you can end up in trouble.
I speak for all of us when I say we don’t want you to be waving flags at the airport when you don’t know the difference between telling an Airbus A380 to wait on the tarmac and guiding an Airbus A380 into the side of an airport terminal.
An invitation to do something awesome
The best bit about this perspective shift is that it doesn’t rely on anyone but you.
When you aim 25% higher than you normally would, and then shift the goalposts so that your new aim becomes your default, your life can change significantly.
This isn’t from some bullshit view that the universe “owes” you anything or that you can manifest a Ferrari by thinking of one. And it’s not rooted in entitlement, arrogance or greed.
Winning over the mattress maker is about realising that YOU are the driving force in achieving things that might, at first thought, seem out of reach.
It’s the self-confidence and humility to say, “This is what I want”, and be OK with the chance of rejection because you know there’ll be more opportunities to put yourself out there in the future.
Here are some things that happened after I started aiming my goals 25% higher than I normally would:
Secured a free 6-month University exchange program to Amsterdam
Hooked up with a cheerleader for the New England Patriots NFL team
Landed a dream gig as a football analyst (with free tickets to see my favourite football team for a year)
Swapped a 9-year career in bartending for a career in copywriting by applying for a job with zero marketing experience under my belt
This snapshot of achievements might not be impressive to you - and that’s exactly the point. Your version of “aiming 25% higher” will be different to everyone else’s.
When you stretch a little further than your heart and mind usually would, two things will happen.
A). You’ll see that you are far more capable than you thought
B). You’ll be shocked at what opportunities fall into your lap
There’s a cool study that showed people underestimate their abilities in the absence of external feedback. Everything you think you’re capable of may be obscured by mental blind spots.
I didn’t actually want to work in a mattress factory, but the interview showed me I was more than the sum of my experiences.
This is your invitation to redefine what you think you’re capable of. You won’t interview in a mattress factory, but you might just surprise yourself with where you end up.
With love,
New World Porter
P.S. If you enjoyed this post, leave a like or comment with the button below (takes 0.46 seconds) so I can think terribly filthy thoughts about you.
There are so many nuggets of gold in here and such a good read. And we’ve read a lot of the same kind of research (from which I, personally, like to quote wildly inaccurate statistics from, because I can never remember the numbers). I read once that 60%* of men will apply for a job they aren’t fully qualified for, whereas roughly the same percentage of women will wait until they’re fully qualified (or just never apply). Men are more likely to ask for a pay rise than women. In freelancing, women are far less likely to raise their rates. Etc etc.
My first paid freelance gig was for a very high-end jeweller and she asked me if I’d written jewellery copy before. I said yep sure (I was once an area manager for a jewellery firm…I figured it was only a small stretch of the truth). I went home and wrote a sample from scratch. She was thrilled. 6 months later I quit my job and was making more money as a writer than I’d ever made in the [shudders] corporate world.
Yours is a message for ~ everyone ~ but I think it’s an especially good one for women, who are so prone to underestimating themselves.
*example of wildly inaccurate quoting of statistics
I came for the advice but stayed for the image captions. Great story.