17. But they are donuts…
“Do you have anxiety because that will be a problem in our working environment so if you have anxiety or any problems like that you need to fess up!”
Um…okay you can’t ask that.
“What is wrong with you that you have an engineering degree and can’t find a job?!” “Well the job market isn’t so great, I actually have a lot of friends who are still looking. I’ve been having interviews just nothing has come through.” “Well I think you are hiding something and that’s why you can’t get hired.”
Well thanks…I didn’t really want to work at Dunkin Donuts anyway. They offered me the job but there was no way I was working under this manager (she was rude and aggressive the whole interview). Luckily the day before I had an interview at a company for an engineering position and I ended up with a job offer the day after the DD interview.
18. But did I sign anything?
I was asked to commit to working for this Fortune 50 company before hearing their offer for compensation. I said “I commit” and once I heard the offer I told them I wouldn’t be accepting it, and actually laughed at how low it was.
HR Rep on the phone said “but you said you’d work here.”
19. I guess that’s sort of a reason to ask?
An interviewer for a legal job asked me if I could run a 7 minute mile. I said I don’t know, but probably if I trained for it. He then said that by the looks of it, he thought I could do it, but they wouldn’t let him ask students to take off their shirts during interviews for him to do a better analysis.
This was for a JAG position, basically a military lawyer. Apparently they have to do some sort of timed jog every so often and JAG lawyers tend to struggle with it.
20. You tell me sir, you seem to know the answer
“How many basketballs could you fit in this room?”
I was applying for a database developer job at a medium sized company. Given the job and my extensive resume, there were plenty of legit, tech based questions they could ask. They could have also asked me to talk about how I handled problem situations in the past.
There was no need, then, to ask some Google-esque, nonsensical question to somehow gauge my thinking skills. The interviewers were just being pompous, and acted as though it would have been a privilege to work for them.
I didn’t get an offer, and didn’t want one.
21. COME ON, MAN
I was interviewing for an administrative assistant position one summer, and the Manager who was interviewing me asked “How much do you weigh?” The assistant manager who was also sitting in on the interview just turned to look at him with a horrified look on his face.
22. Is this a fetish thing?
“While pretending that we [the interview committee] are 3 year olds, please perform a song and dance.”
I don’t mind doing the song and dance, but there’s something so creepy about pretending that a bunch of 40- and 50-somethings are 3 year olds.
23. Wait, you got that from my answer?
Do you hate nature?
I am from New Zealand and I was at a job interview in the Netherlands where I currently live. They asked why I moved there and I said it’s a great place, really pretty and has heaps of awesome things. Then they asked me if I hated nature.
24. Gross
Are you going to be too weird to work with? I suggested to the interviewer that if I were weird I probably would not know it myself, and ask him for an example. The person I was replacing had refused to bathe for three months.
