Hey, I got nothing against dogs, but it was a cramped office area within a larger area that manufactured printing plates and rubber stamps. Not a good environment for a dog, and my boss would never have allowed it. Plus just the entitled attitude of the guy bringing a surprise dog and insisting they were a package deal or no deal did not do him any favors.
Large dog, German Shepard if I recall, and small office, as mentioned. And his “the dog and me are a package deal or forget it” attitude was not endearing. Yeah, it’s not the craziest interview story, but it’s probably the worst I had.
My office wouldn’t allow dogs, either. But I know a couple of people who DO bring their dogs to work. And I don’t think his approach was crazy. And when he learned it was clear that the dog wouldn’t be allowed, I would assume he was as happy to leave as you were to show him the door. Not a fit.
No problem, it was a serious article but a semi-facetious post. I certainly agree that the dog-at-work thing is still rare enough that he should have been upfront about it.
This was like 25 years ago too, before bringing dogs into the workplace was a thing at all. I was the interviewee at a place a few years ago that allowed dogs and one woman had her dog with her at work. I would have been fine working there if they had hired me.
Actually, my worst story along those lines was not technically an interview, but a guy who
On Monday waffled about whether he could take the job, because maybe he had to stop working to care for his dad.
On Wednesday says his dad will be entering a nursing home on Friday, and he can work. Arranges for the first day to be next Monday
Next Monday he arrives, and spends the day with HR doing orientation, signing up for benefits, etc.
On Tuesday we fill out forms to get him on the computer systems, and introduce him around.
On Wednesday he does some background reading and we take him to lunch with the department.
On Thursday he’s a non-show. No warning, no call, no email.
On Friday I get a voicemail saying that he quits. His dad didn’t like the nursing home, and he’s caring for dad in dad’s home.
HR asked me to forward his letter resigning. I asked if they wanted me to forward them the email. They say that’s okay.
We had to pay him for Thurs & Fri, because he was given 2 flexible days off when he was hired.
I was a member of a four-person panel interviewing for a staff attorney for our appellate court. The panel consisted of one of the judges I worked directly for, our senior staff attorney, a representative from HR, and me, at the a time, the judicial assistant to three of the seven judges on the court. Candidate had a been working as a staff attorney for a lower-level federal judge in Virginia. At the beginning of the interview, we introduced ourselves, including our job titles. Candidate nods and smiles but doesn’t take any notes.
When asked why he wanted to leave his current position, he admitted that, because of budget issues, the court had had to reduce their support staff and that he was a staff attorney only half-time and the judge’s judicial assistant the other half. He proceeded to say that any idiot could do a judicial assistant’s job but that he was a LAWYER and was too good for that sort of work. The rest of the panel turned to look at me with shocked faces.
Now I don’t know about the federal courts, but in my court, judicial assistants are treated like gold. After his announcement, the room took on a noticeable chill. My judge put his pen down, which I knew meant he was not participating any more, and the senior staff attorney, with whom I’ve been friends for 20 years, cleared her throat and was suddenly very busy straightening her papers. The HR rep tried to salvage something out of the interview but it was a lost cause. Obviously, he didn’t get the job.
Post script: A couple of weeks after the interview, I was killing time sorting the court’s mail. Here are three identical blue envelopes, obviously thank you notes, from the candidate. One is addressed to the judge on the panel, one is addressed to the senior staff attorney, and one is address to another judge on the court who had absolutely nothing to do with interview process. I puzzled over this for a few minutes until I realized that 1) Mr. I Am a Lawyer didn’t know the names of his interviewers and 2) was certain that he had been interviewed only by fellow lawyers or judges, as befit his exaulted status. So rather than call HR and ask for the names of the interview panel – they would have happily told him – he had gone on to the court’s website, looked at the judges’ photos and found one who was in her late-50s with short hair and glasses. And he addressed his thank you card to her, not to me.
I did a phone screen for a C++ programmer position. The guy claimed to be a college professor who had taught C++. I asked him what a private virtual function is. That is slightly esoteric but a professor who teaches C++ should know this and instead of answering the question he made an excuse that he had something else come up and he never responded to my requests to reschedule the call.
I interviewed a guy for a programming position. He had a master’s degree. I asked him to describe the work environment that he had found the most rewarding in his career. “My master’s project because I didn’t have to work with any other people.”
I interviewed a guy for a lead programmer position. I asked him a couple of coding questions and he said, “I don’t do much coding now. I just do the design then get some stooge to code it up for me.”
I sat on an interview committee for a new teacher years ago. She plops down in her chair, puts her knitting bag on the conference table and starts off with, “I want to tell you all I have issues.” It got worse from there.
I had a similar experience with a woman who just got out of a bad marriage. Completely down in the dumps, would barely look at us, and, yes, complained about her ex.
The professional thing to do is to ask about Dog Policy before wasting everyone’s time with an interview.
I’ve worked in a lot of tech startups and interviewed hundreds of people for junior engineering positions and internships.
The weirdest one was a woman who had recently graduated from a well-regarded computer science program and was interviewing for a systems programming role. This is the nuts-and-bolts, bits-and-bytes kind of programming, which requires a different set of engineering skills than building web or mobile apps, for example.
So we start talking about her experience and her college projects (which were both relevant and very interesting) and come to the standard whiteboard portion of the interview. I ask her to sketch out a data structure to solve a certain contrived example problem.
She takes the marker and starts drawing some vague scribbles, and then just sort of stops and stares at the board for a minute. I try to reassure her, “don’t worry, there’s no right-or-wrong answer, it’s just an exercise to see how you think through the problem.”
She mumbled something and continued to stare at the board. I’m trying to give her the benefit of the doubt - I certainly know how stressful these things can be and I’m no stranger to social anxiety. I ask if perhaps she wants to reschedule.
At that point she turned around, took a deep breath, and let out a blood-curdling scream of “NNOOOOOOOO!!!” and stormed out. The whole office heard her. They heard her two floors up. A confused security guy even came around to ask if everything was OK.
One of my sister’s high school friends was a pharmacy-school classmate of mine. Because of some things she did while in school, the big university hospital in town where she worked as a technician in school refused to hire her on as a pharmacist, and she was the only person in our class who didn’t have a job upon graduation, with the exception of a few people who didn’t know where their SOs were going to end up. (This was obviously before saturation.)
This girl was always a sweet kid when she was a kid hanging out with my sister, but she did some really strange things while we were in school. I totally believe the story about the interview she went to, and when they were about to offer her the job, she pulled a yo-yo out of her purse and started playing with it right there in the office. Yeah, job offer rescinded.
Her older sister and BIL are also pharmacists, and one reason why they later started their own business - a couple states away, no less - was so she would have a job. She was a doozy.
This reminds me of the great first impression I made on my first day of work, right out of school. I vacated my apartment near the university and drove to my new job. They had arranged for an Embassy Suites type hotel for the first week or so to give me time to find a place, so I checked in on the weekend and Sunday night, I got ready for my first day of work. Realizing that real companies started work early, I decided that I would get up bright and early and arrive at work promptly at 9 AM, which to my grad-school mind was about as early as I could conceive of any work to start.
Everything works out and I arrive at the front lobby at almost exactly 9 AM, very pleased with myself. My new boss’s secretary comes out to collect me and tells me they’ve been worried something might have happened to me!
That’s when I found out that the work day started at 8 AM or a bit before. A rude awakening for a student researcher used to starting his day at about 11 AM (and working until midnight).
I was the hiring manager for an IT support position, which was going to be my subordinate. Out of 20 candidates I had 4 brought in for interviews. I would say I got 3 out of 4 decent picks.
The bad one was a guy who had experience working in the US Army doing IT, which I thought was an interesting background, and it seemed like it was at the right level of responsibility, and was for a reasonable duration. However, on being interviewed he mostly gave single-word answers, and we struggled to get him to expand on them. Some of the questions I had put together were describing scenarios where I wanted to see how he went about troubleshooting issues, how he prioritized his work, what his level of technical knowledge was, and so on. His answers to those questions boiled down to asking someone else what he was supposed to do.
When I talked with the rest of the interview panel, we speculated that his work in the Army must have involved him following specific procedures and being heavily micro-managed. We needed someone who could be expected to be fairly self-sufficient, at least at the desktop support level.
Needless to say, he didn’t get a second interview.
A little bit. But this was ~1980, so no email (I had an email address, but would have had to drive back to my university to access it) and no cell phones. It was a little division of a big company, so I don’t think I ever even talked to someone from HR. Just a phone call the week before with my to-be-boss and and a letter with a start date.
