Who Are You?

Only my dog is out of my kitchen, looking in, when I cook. My husband tried to cook the other day for the first time in our lives together.

Let’s pretend I’m hiring a sous-chef in my kitchen (besides Zoe the dog).

What came first, the chicken or the egg? And why did a chicken cross a street?

First off, I’d interview that person in person and get to know who he is. I know my husband is a tornado in the house but an expert at work and with anything that needs to be done anywhere, home or farm.

He is brilliant. MIT thought so and tried to recruit him at age 15. I see him as the man I want to have tea and breakfast with for the rest of my life. Also dinner, and lunch out on weekends.

He wants me to get rid of papers, but I have to go through every one, to find his childhood inventions and others like the microswitch on the grain bin.

I think of an artist like James McNeill Whistler who left everything to his sister. His sister left everything to a university and they have his painting studio as it was the day he died. I’ve a very simple print from the gallery that is elegantly framed and architects and others always ask about it.

Then I tell the story. And another of the farm boy who studied physics and became my husband, who is a rare gem himself. Yes, he did build a workshop off the milk barn. That is gone but he did build a small woodworking toolshop for our nephew who was seven at the time. All are handcrafted and sized for small hands.

Some tools are antique. A major one we got on spec and it turns out the owner and I grew up in the same town and worked in another place during college. It took my husband over four months to gather the tools, longer to recondition them. It was a labor of love.

I’ve always been sold on a job, and never had to really interview for one. The result is that I’ve had some good and a few bad results over the years. Now it seems everything is done online or over the phone.

That’s not how you get to know someone. Who are you? I can better tell that when you are sitting in front of me. You would never know my husband’s work attributes, much less his work ethic (milking cows every day) unless he had a face-to-face interview.

People interview nannies and pet sitters now. People in my husband’s business are phone-screened and if it’s a bank it’s a fingerprint and drug check.

Oh, we want someone to re-invent how to trade stocks faster than everyone else, no in-person interview necessary. Would you like fries with that? Interview, tests. Got it? Dee