WTF? Where did this come from?
I think I may have showed up in shorts and a t-shirt when I got interviewed at Six Flags!
But that was a long time ago. And as well all know, jobs aren’t exactly plentiful now. The high school set is now competing with college grads, who have been trained to “dress for success”. He may have been sent right out of the door even if he had come dressed in a three-piece suit. But the jeans probably didn’t help.
It all depends what time of day the hotdog vendor interview was. If it was before 6 pm, then a morning coat, waistcoat, and spats. After six: white tie, tails, and white waistcoat.
Whatever. Obviously, the “hiring” person at whatever “theme park” is a big turd, with an easy job, and should have sucked a big gulp of air through his fat gob and given the kid a chance.
Assuming the kid wasn’t a turder himself, in which case they should both get raped to death by a she-man with a bone saw.
Jeans, like flip-flops and cleavage, are one of those things that are just never ok at an interview, no matter how tasteful the outfit or how informal the setting.
C’mon. Fancy jeans, and the rest toned down and tucked in, not looking a skater with some stupid face. OK, some regular pants is probably in the dress code. He probably did come off as some stupid kid with his Justin Bieber and that Jesse kid from Breaking Bad’s way of talking. But still, pretty much OK. The kids are all right.
This is severely out of line. Do not make posts like this again, this is a warning.
If I were the interviewer, for this particular job, I don’t think I’d turn the kid away without an interview if he was neatly dressed, but I would grimace internally at least a little. I like candidates who send a crystal-clear “I respect the process, I know how to behave and what proper decorum is” message. What you wear is the easy part, for Pete’s sake.
Sorry about that – I didn’t think about how my words might come across to someone outside of my head. FTR I think Stratocaster is getting close to my revised opinion, and he or she states it much better than me.
Part time Burger flipper at a theme park? I wouldn’t bat an eyelid with smart but casual and black jeans fit that description. The interviewer was far too anal about this.
I know, seriously. When I was in high school and college, all my service-type jobs, I just showed up in a nice button down shirt and a pair of jeans. Hell, sometimes I may even have had a tee shirt. I got the jobs. For white-collar office jobs, when I temped, yeah, I dressed up to business clothes at the temp agency. That would be appropriate. This is a goddamned hot dog vendor job. And he’s wearing (apparently) “smart black jeans,” not some ripped, faded blue jeans. The person hiring as a serious stick up their ass, if the description is accurate.
Rape-wishing aside, I think those who don’t have a problem with jeans need to reconsider. Take a look around at the minimum wage jobs and their attire. Slacks. McDonalds requires dress shoes - no sneakers. Movie theaters, fast food restaurants, etc. Anything that involves a customer requires kakhis. Anything short of construction really. This would go doubly so if this was a theme park with self-pride on service and atmosphere like Busch Gardens or Disney. Disney is notorious for their appearance standards for their employees.
Personally I wouldn’t tell anyone to wear jeans to any interview. Or shorts. And imo black jeans are pretty tacky.
I’d have probably interviewed the kid, but I would have hired another kid that made the effort to dress a little nicer. Employment is very much a buyer’s market these days. There are dozens of applicants for every opening, even for low end entry level jobs. For something like a hot dog stand at an amusement park, pretty much anybody is going to be able to handle the work, so the difference between hired and not hired often comes down to things like appearance and attitude.
For a couple of years I was in the position of filling about 15 entry level jobs a year, for which we had roughly a thousand applications that included resumes. I’ll tell you right now that any reason I found to discard an application was useful to me…I didn’t have the time to think “well, there was one typo in the resume, but maybe I should still consider this person.”
Similarly, I suspect amusement parks get way more applicants than a lot of summer jobs. If I’m having to screen hundreds and hundreds of people in person, I’m looking for shortcuts…like 80% of applicants show up in khakis, so forget the other 20%.
It’s impossible to say with this much information. What were the rest of the clothes? Was he slouching? No way to know.
I’ve hired entry level people before, and we weed out lots of people fairly arbitrarily. It’s not fair, I know, but when you’ve only got a few position and too many applications, you don’t give detailed interviews for each person. Just not enough time.
It sucks, that’s what happens.
I think the outrage is justified. The tyranny of employers really needs to end.
Theme parks have pretty strict rules about the appearance and behavior of their employees…they’re looking for clean-cut youngsters who are enthusiastic and would never dream of stepping out of the mold. So they’re gonna look for people who show up wearing business casual. I’m sure that someone who wore a business suit to such an interview would also be denied an interview. If you’re applying for a certain type of job, you have to realize that the company doesn’t want an individual person, it wants a cog that will fit into the machine as smoothly as possible, with a minimum of adjustments. You want to look like just another cog who will perform as expected (unless the company requires that you wear a certain number of flair items, of course). After you get hired, you can dazzle them with your unique talents.
I think the kid learned a good lesson. You DO NOT show up for a job interview in jeans. Khakis and a smart shirt are as casual as you can go. You can get both at Goodwill for less than $7.00. There are certain expectations for dress in the real world, and at the very least a pair of khakis and a nice shirt can be put into service for funerals and weddings as well as interviews. (Maybe not ideal, but certainly better than a wife-beater and cut-offs…which I have witnessed at both a wedding and a funeral.)
A Chicagoan who’d been called back recently to interview for a job as a CTA bus driver was immediately shown the door because he’d worn neatly pressed jeans to the interview. He’d been out of work for a couple of years, had lost a lot of weight, and didn’t have a suit that fit, even if he’d thought it was appropriate to wear one.
I believe Jaledin was referring to his impression of what he thinks the amusement park HR rep’s mentality must be. I didn’t read it as meaning anyone in the thread.