I knew you were going to say that.
Yes, I did get hired by him.
I see two possibilities here:
- He is genuinely fucked up in the head, in which case you won’t be offered the job.
- He is relatively sane, but thinks himself to be some super-whiz-psychoanalyst (i.e. he’s read and totally swallowed two-and-a-half books called Power Interviewing or some such fucking nonsense), in which case, maybe you paseed the test and he might offer you the job (or maybe not).
Either way; you probably don’t want to work for him - he’s either an unpredictable lunatic, or someone who likes to play disturbing mind games. Like Jackmannii said - you dodged a bullet.
In fact, if he does come back and say “It was all a test, You’ve passed! Don’t you see? I had to test you - to make sure”, I recommend shouting “Fuck you Willy Wonka!”
I once went in for what I thought was a job interview for a startup ad agency and ended up getting shanghaied and forced to sell coupons door to door for a whole 9-hour work day in February. Seriously. I thought I was going to interview to write ad copy, and before I knew it I was in a car with two employees and another victim. They told us we were going to the “other office.” After tromping around in the cold for four or five hours (I was in my Sunday best interview clothes) I told them I that I didn’t really think this was for me and that I wanted to leave. They refused to drive me back to the office and let me go until the end of the day. If I hadn’t been so young and naive and intimidated, I would have called the cops on them. I found out later that the same damned thing had happened to a friend of mine and he had raised a big stink and threatened physical violence against his kidnappers until they let him go.
Has anyone else ever heard of such a thing?
vibrotronica, this didn’t happen to occur in St. Louis about, oh, 7 years ago, did it? 'Cause that sounds a LOT like an experience I had shortly after I graduated college.
vibrotronica as a matter of fact, that exact same thing happened to my boyfriend a little over a year ago in Atlanta! Almost word for word, but I think he was going in to interview for some type of computer/controls related job. That is pretty insane.
I remembered a little while ago, a couple of years ago a friend of mine interviewed for an executive job with a well known financial company. The interview was scheduled for noon - when he went in the interviewer had gone to lunch. He rescheduled for 2:00, and the guy never showed up. I still have a copy of the scathing letter he sent them, and I think I’ll use a little of it to base my letter off of.
I’ve just realized that my life will never be complete until I have to opportunity to yell that at someone.
And I, too, was thinking of that Monty Python sketch.
[Cleese]Goooooodniiight-a-ding-ding-ding[/Cleese]
As Ferret Herder mentioned, his questions were not just rude, but illegal (re: married) if this interview took place in the US. It would be a kindness to the CEO or prez to let him/her know that an employee is putting the company in jeopardy of lawsuits by his hamfisted ineptitude. Go ahead and rehash the entire interview; from your report it looks like it would give the boss plenty to think about. Thats what they get the big bucks for.
Y’know, I didn’t really think I had much to contribute, but you guys just reminded of a very surreal interview I had a few years back…
I was fresh out of college and looking for a summer job to tide me over until I found a “proper” job in marketing or advertising. After trawling the wanted ads, I went for an interview for a sales job, and even though I hate sales, the ad promised good money. The Interview was held in some conference centre and I turned up in a spiffy suit, scrubbed and polished and eager to please. When I got there it turned out to be a group interview, and there were at least fifteen other candidates sitting in front of a screen, sipping tea and nervously nibbling biscuits. There were about three Interviewers, and after we had all arrived and settled down, they turned on a projector and starting giving a powerpoint presentation about who they were and what the job was all about.
Turns out we’d be required to sell frozen fish meals door-to-door. Not very glamorous, but it wasn’t objectionable and the money still looked good. The presentation was very professional, the interviewers were cheerful and affable, and all-in-all, it looked utterly innocuous, if a little boring. However my spidey-sense started tingling once they started explaining how the teams of salesmen would be organised. Turns out you’d each be assigned to a depot based on where you lived - and that you’d be required to live in a special company-owned dormitory with the other salespeople for that depot.
Whaaa?
Not only that, but you were expected to pay the company monthly rent for living in the dorm! After the presentation, the interviewers said we could approach them individually to ask questions, so I sat down with one of them and explained that I lived about twenty minutes away from one of the depots - couldn’t I just continue to live at home and drive in to work each day (y’know, like normal human beings?). He “ummed” a bit and shifted around nervously in his seat before explaining that they found the sales teams were more “effective” if they lived at the dorms together. I thanked him for his time and walked away, shaking my head in utter disbelief all the way home.
To this day, I still believe that company was a front for some weird cult, and the more I think about the whole situation, the creepier and more bizarre it seems.
shudder
I have probably been through about 100 interviews. I used to work as a contractor, so every 6 months or so it was time for another round of interviews with prospective clients.
Damn, I wish I would have kept a journal of some of my more wacky experiences. I remember one, I was talking to the manager of the place, he was walking me around kind of showing me the place and introducing me to people. I remember I shook hands with one guy and when the boss wasn’t looking he gave me a questionable look and shook his head “no”. He was trying to tell me not to accept a position there. After talking to the boss a few more minutes, I understood why.
Another one that sticks in my mind, I was working downtown, suit and tie kinda guy. I went to an interview at 10AM. They put me in a little room with no windows and a little table and two chairs, one for me and one for the interviewer. They proceeded to interview me, one person at a time entering the room. I talked to about 6 different people, and the process continued, it was about 12 noon now. Here comes interviewer number 7, then 8, then 9. It was a small company, so I figured I only had a dozen or so left to interview. Now it’s 1PM, I haven’t had a drink of water, or a potty break, in comes interviewer number 10. By this time my head was spinning, and of course interviewer number 10 was the chief technical guy and all he wanted to talk about was nitty-gritty technical things. So, after interviewer number 10 kicked my ass, in comes interviewer number 11. I don’t know who this guy was, maybe the president of the company, it didn’t matter to me anymore, I told him I was leaving, he didn’t seem surprised.
Just one more. I show up for the interview and two guys take me into a conference room. One would ask a question and the other would interrupt me before I could give an answer. They played question-tag on me for about a half hour or so. Then they got to the serious stuff, they wanted to know how I would solve the main problem they were trying to fix. They wanted to know how I would handle this situation: Their office was in Chicago, the main office was in Cincinnati. Whenever they tried to get something done in the Chicago office, the Cincinnati office would overrule their decisions. Now, they wanted to hire me to fix this problem. I told them that sounded like a local managerial problem. End of interview.
I once went to an interview at a restaurant for a waitress position. The guy kept turning away from me to watch a baseball game on the television behind him.
I wanted to tell him that not only was I a prospective employee, I was also a prospective customer, and that perhaps he should keep that in mind.
I didn’t bother calling him back.
Another position was for an office manager. I knew I’d had it when the guy said, “This is a salaried, professional position. We work long hours, frequently 10-12 hours a day, and we will expect to see you on Saturdays.”
They wrote me later, offering me a different position, but I told them I wasn’t interested. I did want to see my family sometime.
Marlitharn and Magnolia, this happened in Memphis in about 1994 or perhaps early 1995. I haven’t thought about it in several years, but this thread reminded me. It’s got to be some kind of scam these people run in the Southeast. I suspect they can’t stay in one place very long–the offices where I was “interviewed” were shoddy temp offices down by the airport. The more I thought about it, the more the whole thing seemed like a total scam. The receptionist had a stripper body and was scantily clad. The guy who identified himself as the head of the company rolled up in a Dodge Viper (I think… I know for sure it was an expensive domestic sports car) and made sure everyone saw it. Everything that came out of his mouth was a lie. I think the point of the whole thing was to get free labor out of us. I was actually scared to go to another job interview for a couple of months after this experience.
Check with a lawyer if you really need to know, but my memory from Employment Law is that it’s not illegal to ask about marital status in an interview (at least under the federal statutes) - it’s illegal to make a hiring decision based on marital status. Personnel offices often tell their employees that it’s illegal to ask, so they won’t have to argue later with applicants about whether that was the reason that they didn’t get the job.
This may vary from state to state, though.
As to the, ‘it was just a test and you passed’ b.s. I would calmly reply
Well thankyou very much, but you see, I was also testing you, and you failed. Goodbye.
Good article on illegal interview questions.
Questioning marital status is definately taboo in the interview. You could complain to the EEOC if you wanted to invest the time.
I had an interview from hell when I interviewed at Microsoft several years ago.
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They flew me to Seattle, but when I got to the offices and sat down with the manager I was being interviewed for a different job than the one I had spent many phone calls with the recruiter talking about.
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The first co-worker I interviewed with spent the entire time telling me I was unqualified. (Duh, I probably was)
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The next “peer” wouldn’t be working with me in the position I was now interviewing for, so wasn’t interested.
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The next co-worker had to run over to the main MS campus for a crisis. He stuck me in a conference room without telling anyone. I sat there for two hours (over noon time) – could not get hold of the recruiter or manager on the phone, since they were out for lunch.
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Finally, I got the recruiter on the phone and told her I had been sitting in the conference room for two hours. When she came to fetch me, I told her: “It’s obvious that the people in this department don’t want me to work here, I don’t want to work here, and it’s a waste of my time and of your time for me to continue.”
She was very apologetic, and told me to have a nice dinner on them. So I drove out to the “Twin Peaks” hotel and had a fine dinner and drinks charged to Microsoft.
I still gets me that they paid for a flight from Chicago, very nice lodging, a rental car, meals, etc. for a completely useless trip.
Oh! You guys have reminded me of two hilarious, similar interview experiences Mr. Bunny and I have shared.
1st: Went to what a thought was an interview, with resume in hand. Folks came out, greeted me, and led me into the “meeting room”. Okay, still good. Then they proceed to talk about health products, and water purifiers, and start to give demonstrations about how their filtering system makes water so pure and so energized it will light a light bulb! Starting to get suspicious now, and even moreso when they say “everyone else” will be here soon. A gaggle of folks arrived, many healthy products were paraded before my eyes, and then I was told how I was very, very lucky because today they were getting a broadcast from the President of the Company, which turned out to be him, on his snowmobile in Aspen, talking about the many millions of dollars he made in just a year! I FINALLY at this point got someone to tell me that, yes, I was expected to sell this crap to make these millions, and at that point I made up some other appointment (which wasn’t far from the truth, as they’d kept me there for FOUR HOURS), and ran out. They called me for weeks wanting to know what had happened.
2nd: Mr. Bunny was seeking gainful employment, and went to what he thought was an interview. Found himself one of about a hundred people having to sit through a demonstration of knives they were expected to sell, complete with a very-obvious plant in the audience who, when the group was asked what kind of word they’d use to describe the knives to a possible customer, stood up and shouted “I’d say ‘Quality!’” Needless to say, Mr. Bunny elected not to sell knives, thereby losing us the trillions of dollars he could have made in only TWO WEEKS! :rolleyes:
Not nearly as bad, but my brother-in-law (a C++ programmer with many other talents) interviewed at Microsoft about 4 years ago. For a more demanding position with an expectation of working longer hours, they offered him something like $30,000 less than he was already being paid. He essentially asked if they were serious, to which the reply was, “But you’d be working for Microsoft!” as if they employer’s name alone was worth that much less income. HA! Needless to say, he didn’t accept.
What the heck happened?
Did you ever write the letter?
Did the jerk offer you the job?
Are you even still lurking here?
And, what about Naomi?
I started reading the OP thinking “Great I know the answer to this one,” but I turned out to be wrong. A friend of mine who interviews for jobs that often require a high degree of confrontation used to ask “Who did you vote for in the last election?” He was hoping that people would say “Does this have any bearing on the job?” or “I don’t think it’s your business,” to which he’d happily agree and go on with the interview. HR consultants have informed him that he can’t do this because some applicants become flustered. That was why he did it.
But your guy sounds like a Monty Python sketch incarnate.
Even worse interview stories:
A guy I know was being interviewed for a job by 3 people. In the middle of the interview the boss got up, walked out of the room, and came back 5 minutes later with no explanation. Bob felt it put him off a little.
One of my first bosses told me about an interview he did. The panel of 3 interviewers were sitting in the room . The applicant was shown to the table and sat down. jack asked “Did you have any trouble getting here?”. The applicant opened her mouth to speak and vomitted over the table. When she left to clean up the other guy on the panel said “When she comes back Jack you better start with a really easy one.”