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lime green suit

I’ll be the first to admit that  a lime green suit might just have a place in the thinking man’s wardrobe even if it’s a bit risky at a job interview. I have to admit I haven’t got one myself.

Some time ago, Bill Hayhurst and I, he HR Director of Transworld Publishers (Corgi Books) and me UK Sales Director, traveled to Glasgow, Scotland for a day’s interviewing. We were looking for a Sales Rep and Bill had paid a firm to advertise the job and to present us with a list of the best candidates.  We saw a procession of deadbeats from around 9 am, one after another and and at 3 pm when I was thinking of packing up and going home, a gentleman wearing a lime green suit with emerald buttons presented himself for interview. His ensemble was rounded off with light tan shoes and he had LOVE and HATE tattooed in blue ink on his fingers.

He told us about himself in a rather bored manner and despite my questions being prefaced with why, how, when, and what, questions such as what he thought were the essential personal qualities of a book sales rep, or what experience did he have to date that would suggest he could succeed in such a job, he managed to answer them in a  monosyllabic fashion. I was about to say ‘thanks very much for coming etc’ when Bill began and asked him questions about his health, his driving record, whether or not he had a criminal record (a question I had never thought to ask anyone ever). When asked  if he’d had any serious accidents, he suddenly came alive and said, “Accidents? I’ve had loads of accidents!” Bill, taken aback by the sudden vitality of the response asked him to tell us about one or two.

He related how he’d once had a particularly serious accident whilst watching television. Apart from the roof caving in, the building being struck by a missile, an exploding TV set or some such, I couldn’t myself see how the passive act of watching TV might result in a serious accident.

“Well”, he said, “me and my cousin Jimmy were watching the Scottish Cup Final.We’d kicked all the women out of the house, for there’s nae place for women in a house when there’s football on TV.

Just after half time, with no score in the first half, Kenny Dalglish – he’s Jimmy’s favorite footballer, got the ball on the halfway line, and beat three men to score in the top corner of the net. Me and Jimmy got up and did a wee dance around the room. We had a crate of lager with us, and I would’nae say we were drunk, but we overbalanced and fell through a plate glass door. I got 38 stitches in my back, and Jimmy had an arm nearly severed.”

Moral of the story. A lime green suit is probably not going to edge the interview in your favor, all other things being equal.