I went to interview with Old Navy. I had already interviewed at JCPenney and they wanted to hire me on the spot, but I wanted to work at ON more. So I met with the manager and she explained the duties, hours, and said I would be a great fit with my great experience. Then she said they need to offer as many credit cards as possible to customers and asked “How would you go about offering a CC to a customer?” I seriously thought she was joking. I said “if I’m working the register, I would simply ask if they would like to put it on their ON credit card,” literally the exact same speech I’d always gotten there. She said “and then what would you say?” I looked at her like she was an idiot. I said I’d offer another incentive then proceed with the transaction.

She said “and then what would you say” I said “nothing.” She was acting like I needed to present an award speech to win a customer over into signing up for that stupid card. If they don’t want it in the first place, what makes you think they’ll want it a second or third time? I told her there’s nothing else I can add to that statement, since I haven’t heard anything more from her own employees. I wasn’t hired, and boy was I ever glad. I went in there on my break every day for 2 weeks after I worked at JCP looking for a suit in my size (top shelf, no poles around to get it) and after never being greeted, I gladly walked up to her one evening and introduced MYSELF as a customer looking for something, I’d appreciate one of the 15 people on her staff helping me out unlike the last 5 visits where no one would so much as look at me. She got it down, I went through the line and wasn’t even offered a CC. Go figure.

I tried to mitigate the impertinence of the question by saying, “Well, gosh, I don’t think it would be a problem, and anyway, surely there can’t be that much of a difference between our ages?”

My attempt to find common ground fell as flat as a pancake. Her face darkened. “I’m 26!” she hissed. No call back from THAT one!

A few years ago, I applied for a position at the local Kinko’s. At the time, I was battling severe sleep problems. When I went for the interview, I’d been awake for 36 hours straight. I drank a lot of coffee about a hour before and prayed it would be short. Between sleep deprivation and too much caffeine, it was very hard to stay focused. They didn’t throw me out, but I didn’t get the job. I realize now that I must have come across as either very drunk or on drugs.

In one instance I called a candidate, identified myself and the fact that I was very interested in her for the position, to which she responded asking me if I could call her back later, as she was on the phone with her sister.

The other instance was when I called a woman up, identified myself and the position that this young lady had applied for, to which she said, “Buddy, you have the wrong number, I don’t know what you are talking aboutl,” and hung up on me. The coup de grace came five minutes later when she left me a an apologetic message telling me that she now remembered who I was, and that she really, really wanted to speak to me again. She left seven messages over the next three days, none of which were returned.

They gave me a programming test – which I passed and they were impressed because only about 60% of the engineers passed the test and I’m a tech writer. Then they gave me a personality test and said I was too nice for the job.

Then they called me in two years later and gave me the personality test again and I came out even nicer. Then they gave me a take home writing test and accused me of plagiarizing off their web site, and had no answer when I asked them to please show me the paragraphs I had lifted. There weren’t any! I hadn’t plagiarized anything!

Then the HR guy said he wanted copies of all my W-2s for the past five years. Huh?? So I complained to the hiring guy and he wrote a huge long apology and said the HR guy might lose his job for that – but it was clearly fake. To this day that remains the weirdest interview I ever had.

The second two runnerups are: Big Major company for grilling me for 9 hours and I was so turned off I gave the wrong answers to their engineering questions but they offered me the job anyway and I turned them down.

Another big major company interviewed me 14 times over a period of about 3 years. I finally said all the people knew me and there was no more reason for an interview and to please hire me or not already. They never called me again – I was being interviewed as a way for the manager to look busy.

BTW – the best jobs I’ve gotten are those where I break all the rules. This includes one where I had laryngitis and squeaked through the whole interview. Got the job. Another one was a startup where I began telling the CEO, who was about 25, how to run things. He offered me the job and I turned it down. Others where I’ve dressed all wrong.

Her answer costed her the position because I didn’t want to hear about the disciplinary action of someone that pleasured themselves at their desk. But why stop there? She went into the covert operation to catch, DOCUMENT and bring witnesses….

I let her know that she needs to pick something like, ‘I had to put someone on suspension, or notify someone that they didn’t get the promotion’. Without such intense detail.

She is now at a major competitor and we wonder what they do over there…

The guy who used the same email address on his resume as the ‘contact us’ address for his porn site.

Another guy when asked what he was looking for in a manager “someone I can get a beer with”

Another guy who spent 10 minutes of his interview explaining how to work the unemployment system, while explaining the 12 month gap in his resume.

These were all for professional engineering positions.

I’ve been recruiting for over 10 years and I really thought I was pretty thourough in preparing candidates for interviews, but people can surprise you sometimes! Luckily the relationship with the client was very good and we all had a laugh over it.