I got an interview for a technical writer job with Fairchild on the Peninsula. I had to wait in the interview room which was small and dominated with the interviewer's desk. Oddly, bullets of various sizes lined the desk's perimeter. I knew it was a gun nut. There were quite a few bullets of all sizes.
The interviewer entered and took his position behind the desk. The questions went normally, but as he talked, he kept picking up one bullet or another and played with it in a obvious way, as if he wanted me to see. By now I was convinced he was crazy, so I pretended just as hard not to see. In the Navy I once walked into a bunkroom where a guy was blissfully masturbating, totally unaware of me, and I had the same sense of embarrassment or intrusion with the gun nut as I had with my shipmate. And just like in the Navy, I averted my eyes.
Finally, the interviewer tossed the bullet, I'd guess a 50 caliber, into my lap and exclaimed "Here! What do you think of this?"
Gulp. What was I supposed to say? The bullet parted from the shell, and out poured a bunch of inch long nails with needle points on one end and vanes on the other. He looked at me in triumph, "Those are flechettes" he said proudly.
He wasn't a gun nut, there seemed to be a purpose to what he was doing, but I didn't get it. When the bullet exploded, the flechettes scattered in all directions ripping apart any human in the way, he explained.
Eventually he told me that Fairchild Semiconductor was making these bullets secretly for the war in Vietnam. I still didn't get it. Well, he explained, he wanted to be sure I didn't object to making weapons. There were atomic scientists, he said, who refused to make nuclear weapons.
And I blurted out, "Well, I can understand that." From his point of view, I just said entirely the wrong thing. He got patriotic on me, which means that his brown eyes got moist -- they looked just like a Texas cow's, you have never seen anything more brown and humid; I think that always happens when you're trying to be patriotic -- and he expounded on the patriotism to our Nation of building nuclear weapons and flechettes.
Needless to say, I was rejected. I was disappointed because I did want out of Texas for personal reasons. The ex was a pain in the ass. But then, I got to thinking about it. It was the first time in my life I thought about things like that, and you know what? I was glad I failed the interview.
If he hired me without folderol, I would have gone to work dutifully documenting bullets with flechettes. It wouldn't have occurred to me to question what I was doing because I have always had to work for a living. But since the question was raised, no, I didn't want that kind of job. I flew back to Texas downright cheerful.
-- John K. Taber