The odd man out

I arrived at the psychiatric hospital's information desk. They directed me to the waiting room for the interview.In the room was a range of applicants, all coping in their own ways with the stress of waiting. Some were making stilted conversation, others were reading papers or journals. I buried my head in a journal. The tension in the room noticeably increased when the news came in that only one post was available. One applicant took this extremely badly. The young womanfrom the former Eastern Europe really started to panic. She said that she would never get the job as she had no experience in psychiatry and would never be chosen in preference to English applicants. She said she might as well go to the desk and tell them she no longer wanted to do the interview and go home instead. We said to her that she should not give up asinterviews are hard to predict. I probably wasn't the only one who thought deep down that there was some truth in what she said. One man, older than the rest of us, looked up from his paper and told the woman that he completely agreed with everything she said; he thought she should give up and go home. After this, despite our protestations, she left. I looked at the man behind the newspaper with a mixture of disbelief and hatred. How could anyone stoop so low to get one overa fellow applicant? Gradually the tension in the room settled again. A messenger arrived to apologise for the delay and tell us that the interviews would begin soon. At this point the man with the newspaper folded it up, wished us all good luck, left the room, and returned to his ward.