Career & Life Journeys · Original fiction
A rejection helps a man hear a question he had avoided asking himself.
A practised answer
Before the interview, Imran rehearsed an answer about ambition until the words sounded smooth and empty. He wanted the position because he needed work, but he had also spent years treating every job title as proof that he was moving forward. When the interviewer asked what he liked making, he answered with the name of a software package.
He had borrowed a jacket from his cousin and spent the previous evening removing small marks from its sleeve. On the bus, he checked the interview address so often that the screen began to feel like a reassurance rather than a map. His mother had wished him luck without asking what the salary might be. He was grateful for the restraint and burdened by what he imagined it concealed. At the reception desk, he gave his name too quickly and had to repeat it. The other candidates looked absorbed in their own preparations. He mistook that absorption for confidence. When he was called inside, he decided to speak in the polished phrases he had practised. They would keep the uncertain parts of his life out of view. For the first few questions, the plan seemed to work. Then the interviewer asked about making something, and his prepared language gave him nowhere useful to go.
A question without a script
She asked again, more gently. What have you made that you still think about? He described a simple order form he had built for his aunt’s tailoring shop. Customers had stopped sending measurements in scattered messages. His aunt had stopped losing evenings trying to find them. As he spoke, he forgot to sound impressive. He explained the mistakes, the changes and the relief in her voice when it finally worked.
His aunt’s shop occupied the front room of a house where customers often stayed to talk after collecting their clothes. Measurements arrived on scraps of paper, through voice messages and sometimes through relatives who remembered only half the details. Imran had originally helped because she asked him to find a missing order on her phone. His first solution was too complicated. She forgot which field meant the collection date and which meant the date an order arrived. He became impatient until she asked him to sit beside her for one full afternoon. Watching the actual work changed his assumptions. The most important information was not what he had designed the form to display most prominently. When he described this to the interviewer, he could remember the exact moment he moved the collection date to the top. It was the kind of detail no rehearsed claim about being a problem solver could replace.
An answer he did not want
He did not get the job. The rejection arrived the next afternoon, and it hurt despite his attempt to act philosophical. He allowed himself a day of sulking. Then he looked at the notes he had taken after the interview. The question about what he liked making stayed with him. He had been describing his work through titles when the part he cared about was solving a particular person’s problem.
He read the rejection message standing in a supermarket queue. By the time he reached home, he had imagined several reasons for it, most of them unkind to himself. A friend suggested sending an angry reply about employers expecting too much. Another offered a reassuring explanation neither could verify. Imran did neither. He thanked the interviewer for her time and asked whether she could share any feedback. There was no reply, and he eventually stopped checking for one. The unanswered message became a useful boundary: he did not know why he had been rejected. He could examine his preparation without pretending to read a stranger’s mind. That evening, he wrote down the questions he had struggled with. Beside the question about what he enjoyed making, he wrote more than he intended. It was the first time in weeks that describing his work felt less like defending himself and more like recognising something he wanted to continue.
The next piece of work
Imran still applied for jobs. He also asked his aunt what remained difficult. She introduced him to a neighbour who needed help organising stock. The project was modest, the fee carefully discussed and the first version imperfect. He documented what changed instead of inflating it into a dramatic success story. When another interview came, he could describe a real problem and what he had learned.
The neighbour who needed stock records ran a small stationery stall. Imran asked how much time the owner wanted to spend entering information and what he needed to find quickly. He also discussed the fee before beginning, which felt more uncomfortable than the technical work. They agreed on a limited first version. Imran resisted adding features simply because he knew how to build them. When the owner found an error, he recorded the circumstances and corrected it rather than explaining why the mistake was unusual. The work gave him no dramatic proof that rejection had been fortunate. It gave him another example of learning to ask better questions. He photographed the blank form, with permission, and kept notes that did not expose customer details. In the next application, he described the project plainly: what the problem was, what he changed and what remained outside the agreed scope.
A different kind of progress
The first rejection did not secretly guarantee a better future. It remained a disappointment. But it became one chapter rather than a verdict. Imran kept a record of the work he was proud to explain. Some entries were paid; some were not. Together, they gave him a clearer account of the life behind his résumé.
His mother noticed that he spoke differently about the next interview. He still wanted the position, and money still mattered. The difference was that the possibility of rejection no longer seemed capable of making every previous effort meaningless. He carried a notebook containing the tailoring form, the stationery project and several failed ideas. One page described a feature he had removed because nobody used it. He had once believed that admitting such a change would weaken his account. Now it demonstrated that he had paid attention. Before leaving, he returned his cousin’s jacket and chose a clean shirt of his own. It did not turn him into a more authentic person or guarantee confidence. It was simply one less unfamiliar thing to think about. On the bus, he looked at the address once, then opened the page about his aunt. Her work had given him an honest place to begin talking about his own.
An original fictional story created for eautobiography Journal. Characters and events are imagined.
