A timely T-shirt selection
It was a pivotal job interview. My current job was boring me to tears and was not challenging me to express and utilise my bottomless well of talent, initiative and pop-culture knowledge.
I had also been reprimanded for surfing adult content on the internet, so my shares were relatively low.
How opportune then, that a job advert appeared for a position at men’s magazine FHM. FHM were purveyors of adult-adjacent content that appealed to men – stories about sport, streaking and how to stage a Viking funeral for yourself, where your corpse is burned on a barge set alight by archers with flaming arrows. Also lots of images of women in bikinis.
I had long nurtured a deep appreciation for women in bikinis, as well as sport and had on occasion taken my clothes off in public. I also loved the idea of being laid to rest on a burning barge.
I applied, and was invited to fly up to Johannesburg from Cape Town for an interview. This meant a 4am wake-up and a desperate rush to get out of the house in time to make my flight. But before that, wardrobe selection.
What should I wear to this most important job interview?
I surveyed my options: a pile of T-shirts. There was one quite remarkable T-shirt, though … a black one from the UK, and it bore the following legend in green, leafy font: “Smoke More Pot”.
In those days, pot was illegal, the proclivity of underworld figures, crooks, outcasts and social deviants. However, the weed did have a certain rebel charm. It was a maverick habit, appreciated by some, frowned upon by others. To dabble in the odd choef of weed was one thing, though. To shout it with your chest is quite another.
But standing there in front of my clothes cupboard that dark morning, I knew I needed to distinguish myself, in the great bikinis-rugger-n-fire-funerals pick-me sweepstakes I had chosen to enter. So I chose to wear my “Smoke More Pot” T-shirt.
Brendan Cooper, the legendary editor of the magazine. took one look at my “Smoke More Pot” T-shirt and hired me on the spot.
Sometimes it pays to stray slightly from the path of convention. And also that conscious, intentional, garment choice is huge. I recommend it. Highly.