“How’s about we start with you telling me a bit about yourself?”

“Yes, gladly, Alex. Absolutely.” He clears absolutely nothing from his throat.

It’s an out-of-body, out-of-his-mind experience. The answer he gives (or at least hears himself giving) is earnest, tactful, and glossed with sterilized workplace elocution. He manages to cover the scope of his work history, seaming his own real-life, firsthand experience to the relevant, transferable skills he’d memorized from the job description. He touches on his time away, then expertly segues into a condensed meditation on what he’d learned from prison rather than the experience itself. He calls these lessons takeaways, the most important of which, Alex, was the importance of family. The value of commitment and devotion to his own, to be there for him—them. To provide them a safe, comfortable life full of the opportunities that maybe he’d once had, but had been too shortsighted or just plain scared to pursue himself.

This whole time he’s been tracking Alex’s nods and eyebrow scrunches for hints of suspicion or boredom, neither of which, by his measure, he’s provoked, even after speaking only about himself for such a long, unbroken stretch of minutes. In fact, she appears to be really listening, actually seems interested in what he’s saying, maybe even in him as a person.

This must be why rich people go to therapy. What a delight to be heard, to be understood and matter. Nearing the end of his monologue, he’s overtaken by a soothing wave brought on by something more than the successful delivery of his abridged life story. Instead, he can’t help but suspect this foreign balm might simply be the attention, perhaps even sympathy, of another human being.

By the end, he’s so depleted that he can’t assemble anything but a cliché to close on, telling her that’s him in a nutshell.

She jots something in the folder. And when she thanks him for sharing, it sounds like she really means it.

The rest of the questions are all pretty standard, basically word for word off his note cards. No curveballs about the number of jumbo jets currently airborne around the globe, or grains of sand in the Sahara. Nothing about desert island reading material, or previous workplace role models. She does sneak in one cutesy question about what kind of animal he would be, and he says dog. Though a number of reasons flutter about him, the only two he catches and now releases are loyalty and caring, which appear to satisfy her just fine. How great. Swell.

Otherwise, it’s all:

Why should I hire you?

Why do you want this job?

How do you deal with conflict?

And stress?