DEAR SIR OR MADMAN

The interview was being conducted in the middle of a vast, open loft space in London’s East End. All across the room, nobody’s head turned.

Nell and I were perched as well -- atop tall, wobbly director’s chairs. Nell spun in her chair and pointed to a sign, laminated and nailed to the wall, listing the four employment rules in capital letters. Then she whipped back around and smiled aggressively, displaying the hidden reaches of her gums.

My turn to talk.

I didn’t know what to say about any of this, so I asked about the dress code. She looked at me as if I had let her down. "This is quite important to us, Karen," she said to me in her proper British accent. "No mock turtlenecks."

I chuckled, thinking this had to be a joke -- an attempt to break the ice. But no, Nell was serious. "There is no reason to wear mock turtlenecks when you can wear real turtlenecks," she said.

Then she added: "And if you cannot arrange your life so that you arrive at your desk punctually at 8:30 in the morning, then I shall be obligated to give you the sack. That’s rule number one."

With that, she jumped down from her very tall director’s chair, indicating the interview was over. How interesting, I thought -- it marked the first time anyone had threatened to fire me before even hiring me.

As Nell walked me to the door, she asked the receptionist to get my coat for me. When it arrived, Nell grabbed it and looked inside at the label. "Right, the Gap," she said, and snorted in amusement. At that particular time in London, Gaps were popping up all over the city -- a sure sign of the apocalypse to anyone who dressed like Nell.

Nell’s wardrobe certainly did not come from the Gap. Rather, it consisted of a dramatic assortment of scarves, shawls and what appeared to be a piece of a kimono, all layered on top of a billowy skirt. Anyone else wearing this would have looked fat, but Nell was obviously skinny as a bean pole. The effect was something like a cross between heroin chic and Stevie Nicks.

I went home.

You might wonder why I’d even be applying for a job as an "office coordinator" -- what does that mean, anyway? -- working for a lunatic in a caftan, with a pet parrot, at a company named after molten lava.

Well, the reason is: I wanted to live in London. I wanted it badly. It was 1995, I was straight out of college, and I had just four weeks to find a job. My college roommate’s parents had generously offered to let me stay with them in London while I job-hunted, and I had only three days left. After that, it would be back to Indiana.

In light of all that, Magma didn’t look so bad. Not only was it in the East End, a landscape of art galleries and gymnasium-sized nightclubs scattered across a fabulous backdrop of industrial desolation, but it paid money.

The next morning at breakfast, my friend’s mom looked at me quizzically and told me that I had received a couple of phone messages. One was from the police station, she said, reminding me about a pending court date. The other was from an angry man calling himself Dr. Tad, chastising me for missing an appointment for microdermabrasion of my arms and chest.

Obviously, these were prank calls. After all, who sandpapers their chest?

I wondered who would possibly be prank-calling me in London, out of the blue. So we did a caller ID, and got connected -- guess where -- to the main switchboard at Magma.

Someone on the staff at Magma was pretending to be someone named Dr. Tad. My future prospective colleagues were crank-calling me and expressing interest in the condition of my bosom.

What an asylum that place must be, I decided.

Still, in a sign of my desperation for gainful employment, I spent the afternoon at the library, trying to figure out what Magma actually did. I found a reference in a newspaper to a public-nuisance complaint having to do with dumplings being thrown out the office window at pedestrians, but nothing actually describing the company’s main line of business.

That very afternoon, I received another phone message -- this one from Nell. She wanted to offer me the job.

I called her back immediately, with a mix of anticipation and dread. "I’m really excited about working with you," I told Nell, my voice cracking out of nervousness. "I have just one question: What will be my role at Magma? Your advertisement was unclear on that point."

Nell went silent for a moment, as if she hadn’t actually thought about that yet. "Well. There’s an absolute mountain of mail that must be opened," she said. “And there are many things that are still waiting to be laminated.”

Then she added: "And when I'm away, of course, someone must care for William."

"William?" I asked.

"Yes, William, the cockatoo whom you should have met during your first round of interviews," she said. In the background, I faintly heard William saying something that sounded like "Ferris wheel."

"I’ll expect you promptly at 8:30 on Monday -- don’t be late!" Nell said. And then, as if she were practicing scales for the choir, she warbled an astonishing "Thank youuu!" and rang off.