I was early, as usual. The registration person was stuck in traffic, so I sat at a table and got a preview of the slide show as the presenter struggled with her technology. A tall man in long shorts and a gorgeous shirt in a splashy green and orange plaid sat down next to me.
“Hi, I'm Dan.”
“Hi, Dan. I'm Carol.”
And then the dreaded question. “What do you do, Carol?”
My shoulders spasmed up to my earlobes with nervous tension. What do I do, what do I do? As my brain spun in circles, I realized, omigod, it's another version of the most dreaded interview question on earth: Tell me about yourself. Well, I flunked the answer to the question, What do I do, I'm sorry to say. With my eyes darting around the room, I stammered some disconnected sentences and chanced a glance at his face to see if I was sunk. He looked a little nonplussed. I took a breath. I'm sure I looked manic at that point.
Eventually I clawed my way to the metaphorical third floor, but not after I crashed the elevator into the basement. You get what I'm saying? The elevator pitch? I'm sure you have one, a lovely 30-second speech about what you do. Right? A little blurb that rolls trippingly off your tongue when someone asks you, What do you do? I actually have an elevator pitch, believe it or not, but it needs some work, especially after today. This morning I met with my business advisor from the SBDC. She did a little niche reconstruction on me (it's not as painful—or humiliating—as it sounds), and now my elevator pitch needs revision.
He could have got up and joined people at another table at that point, but Dan stuck it out the entire evening. Maybe he was taking pity on me, trying to be nice, trying not to be rude. It's possible, I suppose. It's more likely he forgot my disjointed introduction immediately and got busy with his own thoughts. Like a normal person.
The blonde woman who sat down on my left smiled and introduced herself.
“Hi, I'm Kim.”
I introduced myself, relieved to have someone else to be the focus of Dan's attention. But, no, what she said was, “So, Carol, what do you do?”
What is with these people? Don't they care about who I am? Or how I feel? All they want to know is what I do! Like what I do will explain everything. Like what I do is the clue to understanding me. Clearly they don't realize that what I do changes every week! Ten weeks ago, I was a college instructor. Then I was an unemployed loser. Followed the next week by a frustrated doctoral candidate. Then suddenly I was a small business owner! And then I was a website designer, that was a laugh a minute. Now I guess I'm a researcher, although the niche reconstruction is still going on, so I'm not sure if I'm a marketing researcher or what kind of researcher I am, exactly. And I think I have more roles planned for next week.
So what do I say when they ask what I do? It sounds like a metaphysical question, one of those questions whose answer is in the question, or whose answer is a journey not a destination, or whose answer is inside me, like god. (You know what they say about god dwelling inside us, right? That he'd better like enchiladas, because that is what he's getting. Har har har.) Anyway, I'm going to revise my elevator pitch. And I'll tidy up my mission statement and my personal life philosophy, too, as long as I've got the rock overturned. And maybe I'll do some laundry and clean the cat box. At least I'll have something to say the next time someone asks me, What do you do?
