"I have learned that you lied to get this job, that you misrepresented yourself."
"But everything on my resume, everything on my work history is true." she pleaded. "I didn't claim to have done anything that I hadn't done. All of the facts are correct. I even supplied more references than was required, just to be certain that enough could be contacted to confirm my background."
"I wasn't referring to your application. It was something you said during the interview."
"The interview? But--?"
"Tell me, Rahila, why did you not inform your interviewer that you were single?"
"I wasn't asked."
"Perhaps not in those precise words, but you were asked whether you had a satisfactory family relationship. It amounts to the same thing."
A chill flew up Rahila's back. She knew she had paled. "I answered the questions that I was asked, ma'am, and I did so truthfully. I have a very satisfactory relationship with my brothers and sisters. I visit them frequently, and spend a great deal of time with my nephews and nieces."
"But not with your parents?"
"My--? What are you accusing me of?"
"You are not married, are you." The question in her words was belied by her accusatory tone.
Had the problem been simply a matter of job performance, she might have been able to beg a chance to improve during a probation period. As it was, there was nothing she could do. Framing her evasion as a lie meant she could be terminated for cause, and that meant finding a job in some other call center would be nearly impossible now.
Living hand-to-mouth, as she did, also meant that she couldn't afford to keep her apartment for more than another month, so she made an all-out effort to land another job. But once you've been fired for cause, any hope of getting a glowing background check might as well have been pushed off a cliff. Which is how she ended up outside of a charitable women's assistance center and homeless sanctuary, carrying what few things she'd decided were essential to survival.
"Well," she confided to the night, "At least it's a place to sleep."
As much as the outside of the center fit comfortably into the downtown mix of modern and traditional architecture, Rahila got a decidedly different feeling once she stepped inside. Instead of the subtly non-secular design ethic that usually permeated public institutions, the building's interior nearly screamed of the religious iconography held sacred by the organization that had run such centers for over a hundred years, and suggested a morality that, thankfully, was not native to her country. Yet, it was that very foreignness that had drawn her here, because the people who subscribed to the morality espoused by the church that funded the center did not adhere to the strict social stratification to which her own culture had become captive.
When her turn came to be admitted, Rahila was led to a small table in a room midway down the central corridor. The man who had called her name mispronounced it badly, but she didn't think it wise to correct him. Once he was seated opposite her, he introduced himself as Fred Green, and skimmed through her application questionnaire.
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