The Bajeezers
Even for the most menial positions, it is seldom that an interview does not tacitly enforce some kind of dress code. But this being a phone interview, I took the opportunity to leave my hair untamed and slouch in a bleach-spotted shirt and bare feet in an armchair by the window. The phone rang within a few minutes of the appointed time and a bubbly man named Julian introduced himself over the wire. He told me he was a New Yorker living in Toronto, but by his intonation and the shape of his vowels, I could have sworn there had been a long layover in Manila or São Paolo. He described the company, Singe City, with sound bites that seemed to have been pre-recorded: “We are big time and passionate foodies”; and “It started a long long time ago with two grandmothers.”
His pitch was one of complete flexibility. “A lot of people definitely use social networking, starting off by selling to friends and family and slowly—and when i say ‘slowly’ I mean much faster than you would think—building it up. You can sell on facebook, you can sell on twitter: whatever works for you.” But however you bring in orders, Julian assured me, Singe City will give you 15% of the gross: in two years of operation they’d never had a salesperson leave.
The company history was like a fable: a lifelong cooking friendship between two grandmothers spawns a singularly delicious hot sauce, morphing at the hands of their grandchildren into a company with “our hands in all six continents,” as Julian put it. I assumed he was leaving out Antarctica.
“One amazing thing about Singe City,” he told me, “is that we have 100% customer repeat. When I say hot sauce I don’t mean one of those sauces that burn the bajeezers out of you—I mean something that’s very flavorful and just brings out the aroma in the dishes.”
I recalled the description of the Singe City sauce featured on the company’s placeholder website:”fresh, fun, flirty, wicked good, taste explosion, zinger, wing dinger, a humdinger, finger-lickin’ yum, fun-in-the-tum, tickle in your taste buds, party in your mouth, dance off in your belly, tasty, gourmet goodness, good eatin’, zestilicious, hot-but-not-too-hot, just right flavor combo, all-natural, preservative free, fan-friggin-tastic, sassy, saucy, flavor-li-cious taste, hit the fresh spot sauces.”
I came to. “Yeah…something kind of tangy and flavorful, right?”
“Exactly. The thing that people love about Singe City is that our sauces are fresh. We hold no inventory here. We make all our sauces based on the orders we get.”
Recently, a “holding company infused financial backing” into Singe City’s brand, spurring the “amazing growth phase” on the strength of which I was being interviewed. “The other thing to know,” according to Julian, “is that we always give away a company car to our top salespeople. In 2009, it was a Mini Cooper. For 2010, we’re leaning towards the BMW 3 Series.”
His enthusiasm for the Singe City business model was unflagging. “We believe in this system,” Julian said with his stilted brand of conviction. “We’re a cooperative company: we give the power into your hands.”
At his behest, I used my window to ask Julian whether his grandmother was one of the original sauciers (she wasn’t), and when I was was out of questions, he turned around and asked “How did you feel the interview went?”
“Pretty well,” I thought aloud. I told him I liked the unconventional interview style.
“You know what it is about us?” he asked. “We don’t look at resumes. We don’t care what it says on a piece of paper. We want to find out who you are. We are always willing to take on passionate people.” I don’t know how Julian discovered my passion in such a hollow interview process, but I went with it. “We are not about competition. We’re laid back; we want everyone to enjoy themselves,” he said. You know, I have interviewed a lot of people and they all say, ‘Julian, I love this. you guys are so not stuffy.’
“We have gotten over 25000 applications over the past month, and we don’t go for everyone: we want people who believe in the company, and we really loved your enthusiasm,” Julian told me. If I wanted to take the next step, all I’d have to do was write an email to info@singecity.com with this in the subject line:
“I love Singe City.”
