When Not to Get Hired 101

[Android Kaeli]

I totally forgot about this until I went to my local mall the other day.

This takes place around the same time I had done the interview for big box toy store, give or take a couple of weeks. As I mentioned in my previous post in this thread, I was putting applications left, right, up, and down to get a second job (and after the fiasco with BBTS, I made damn sure I was more blunt about it) and put in an application at more then a few of the stores in the mall. I get a call from one of them, Expensive Clothing Store to come in for an interview so I get dolled up and head on over there.

I should've walked right out after the employees at the front said that the manager had just gone to lunch and would be about another half hour or so, but because I still needed a second job I was, at the time, desperate so I walked around the mall for a bit before coming back about a half hour later. Manager STILL wasn't back, would be another five minutes, so I decided to stay in the store this time and look around to see what kind of stuff they're selling.

About ten minutes later two women come out from the back, one leaves after a goodbye and the other stays -- this is probably the manager or whoever so I go up to the desk and introduce myself. The woman looks at me like I had just sprouted an extra head and tells me I'm nearly an hour late, I tell her that, no, I was told that SHE was on lunch and to come back in a half hour. The manager seems to think I'm lying but the two employees that were standing at the front backed me up, as they were instructed to tell anyone looking for a manager that by, you know, her.

But I still got the interview, one of the things I was asked is if I was willing to quit Random Craft Store right then and there to work for Expensive Clothing Store. Manager said she wouldn't be able to give me a lot of hours, twenty at the most, and I reminded her the whole reason as to why I was looking for a second job was because I was getting so few hours. Needless to say I didn't get the job and am damn glad I didn't, as the store was closed two years later.


Funny thing is, the day BEFORE my orientation at the Warehouse, one of the other stores in the same mall gave me a call and said that they'd like to give me an interview. Sorry, too late about that.

[Aragarthiel]

A couple of years ago, Hubs and I were in the last few days of living at our old place, and he managed to get me an interview for a part-time job at a local, mom-and-pop type convenience store. I was excited, considering I had never had a job before and the manager knew Hubs well enough that she was willing to work my schedule around his so I could get dropped off and picked up. I show up and there's no real interview, she just tells me that she wants me to spend a few hours there that night to train a bit, and she'd see how I did.

Well, I get there, and the employees who were supposed to be training me completely blew me off. Remember, I had never had a job before, so a quick "Do this then this then this" on the register wasn't enough. Some items had to be scanned, some had to be typed in, and it was an abnormally busy night. Then it turns out, the boss is a neat freak and wants everything cleaned CONSTANTLY. If you make a pizza (this place has carry-out, and they make about a dozen pizzas an hour), you have to use a new rag and a clean pizza cutter every time. The counter has to be wiped between every customer. Someone bought a 6-pack of beer? You better run back to the cooler and put another one in.

Hubs had to come and get me early because I was tired of the employees snapping at me with things like, "Pall Malls are right HERE!" and "Get another rag!" to the point that I was getting ready to cry. The manager called me later and told me that they were just tired of always having to train new people, she'd talk to them, and if I'd call back tomorrow (she gave me her cell number so I could contact her directly), she'd try to see if she could schedule me for the week.

The next day, I called her back three times (despite being heavily into packing up our things). On the last call she finally picked up and told me she was at a family Easter gathering and that she'd call me back. She never did, but it was probably for the best, if I would have had coworkers like that.

[Shalom]

Ah, that reminds me.

Fresh out of college, newly licensed, I answered an ad for a part-time pharmacist.
He told me I should come in for the afternoon, because he had to go somewhere and "he needed to have a pharmacist in the store". If things worked out, maybe we would talk about further employment. That should have raised a red flag, but I was naive then.

So I'm looking around the store. It doesn't look anything like the practice pharmacy we had set up in school. The bottle of distilled water, for one thing, looked like it hadn't been moved in ages; he apparently was reconstituting the pediatric antibiotics with straight tap water, which is a no-no. There were two full shelving units, back to back, maybe four shelves each, jam-packed with nothing but expired medications; some of which, on the back unit, was close to 20 years outdated. I'm talking stuff they didn't even make anymore, by companies that didn't exist. Hopefully he wasn't dispensing any of that stuff, but why in hell didn't he send it in for credit?

But the worst part was, when I got there, a little early so I could see what was going on, I found the tech standing by herself at the counter, typing prescriptions, counting them, and packaging them, whilst the pharmacist himself sat on his tush in the back office and ignored her. Not checking anything at all, not even glancing at the prescriptions, nothing. Now I may never yet have worked as a pharmacist at that point in my career, but I'd interned for the mandatory 1,040 hours, and I knew that's not how it's done. That was when I understood his line about having the pharmacist in the store... it's not your mere physical presence on the premises that makes it legal, dumbass, it's you doing your job.

So when he left, I stood there with the tech and tried to make myself useful. Unfortunately I couldn't. The reason for this was because the majority of the scripts were from one doctor with an office upstairs from the pharmacy, who had the second-worst handwriting I'd ever seen in my life, in a doctor or anyone else. (During the seventeen subsequent years I've seen one more doctor who just might write worse than him, demoting him to third.) Now as part of my professional practise curriculum I'd taken the requisite course in deciphering doctors' chicken scratch, and even back then I was pretty good at it, but this stuff was just ridiculous. The tech claimed to know how to read the stuff, but I was literally just guessing.

(As an example, when I was working at Aid of Right a few months later I got a prescription from him that was scribbled on all over every part of it, even in the bit up top where his name and address were preprinted. This was back when it was legal to put more than one script on a blank, but I couldn't even tell how many there were, never mind what they were. I told the patient that there was one pharmacy that could read that doctor's writing, but she said she already tried there and they didn't take her insurance. We faxed the office for clarification and found out that the doctor was out ill, and nobody else in his office could read it either. Weeks later, when it was too late for it to be useful, we finally found out he'd written TEN prescriptions on that one blank.)

Oh well. I stood there like a dummkopf watching the tech do her thing for the next couple hours, said goodbye at the end of the day, walked out and never went back. Never called him about the job. Never even tried to collect the pay he owed me for my half-day of work. I wanted to have absolutely no connection to that place whatsoever, just in case the SHTF.

(Which it eventually did, about ten years later, when the doctor went to jail for three years for running a pill mill. There's still a pharmacy on that block; I don't remember if it's the same one, and frankly I don't care.)

[Racket_Man]

I forgot about this one from back in my days in IT.

I had been out of work for a while and was sending out resumes like mad.

I got a call from a local furniture chain who were looking to add a person to their small IT dept. I arranged for an interview time at the main store of the chain.

I arrived 10 -15 minutes early as I always did just in case either I had trouble finding the location or they wanted me to fill out an application or paperwork. I check in with the central reception area at the front of the store and was informed the person I was interviewing with would be with me shortly.

The person finally comes out and informs me they are rather busy and would I mind walking around during the interview. All they really did was guide me toward the exit door while asking a few non-descript questions and ended the "interview" by really saying Goody-bye and walking away.

[protege]

There were a number of times fresh out of college that I saw flyers for the door to door Knives company around my area. Of course they call themselves something different so you can't figure out what they do by the company name but the promises they were making seemed too good to be true. Eventually I did some research and found out what it really was.

Amway is notorious for having their "salespeople" giving out other names so you can't quite figure out what they actually do. Yep, I got called for an interview after answering an ad for an "accountant."

I knew something was up when the interview was moved from a corporate-sounding address inside the city limits...to a Panera restaurant in the suburbs. I went along with it anyway, because I was curious.

When the guy giving the interview kept dodging my questions about the "company," I had all I needed to know. Shady as hell, since he kept going on about how "people will buy our 'products' from you instead of stores.' Well that, and he mentioned "rewards" I'd get for bringing new "salespeople" into the firm.

That last bit unfurled every red flag in my arsenal. You can't tell me what the company does, other than you sell products (which you can't tell me about) via me, over the internet? You want me to bring in other folks to this "business" which will "reward" me?

After about half an hour of the "interview," I said I'd have to think about it and left. Next day, I get a call from the guy wanting me to return his "promotional" materials. Considering that I'd have to pay to do that, I told him to bugger off. Instead, I handed the materials to my cousin...who works at a major three-letter media network. She actually used the materials in one of those "investigative" stories

[greek_jester]

Instead, I handed the materials to my cousin...who works at a major three-letter media network. She actually used the materials in one of those "investigative" stories

Ooh, evil. I like it!

[scruff]

I got an 'interview' for a firm that seemed to do double-glazing, back when I was in my 20's.
Being unemployed at the time I jumped at the chance for an interview.

Site location was vague, when I eventually found the building (still got there early) there was no-one on reception. I wandered around the building, found hand-writen signs directing to an 'interview room', empty.

Wandered back to reception, met another interviewee, a year or so younger than me.
We got told a little about the job (cold calling), and that the boss took people out to the pub early friday afternoon if they'd made their sales targets, the rest stayed in the office working.

She got taken up to the interview room, after we explained I was also there for an interview, and not her mum (?) I was told someone would be back to interview me too, soon.
Whilst waiting I worked out the 'going to the pub early on friday' was rubbish, the hours required meant friday lunchtime was quitting time.
she got seen out of the door, I got "oh, you still here?"

On the upside, I got a job later with a different company with a letter giving a start date but no time, and the HR person went on holiday before the date, without telling any collegue or reception, leaving me stuck in reception until the team lead turned up over an hour later and pleased to see me.

[mosspack1]

My daughter answered an ad for a no experience required commercial cleaning supplies company and set up an interview. I took her and was confused because the sign on the front was a different name than the company she was interviewing with. I am thinking maybe a new company and had not had a chance to change the sign. While she was in with the person interviewing her I casually asks the receptionist how long they had been there. Oh, a little over a year . Plenty of time to change the sign.

So it turns out it is a door to door vacuum cleaning company named after a pretty arc one might see in the sky after it rains. But she wanted to try it anyway because the guy told her there would be an office position opening shortly. So she picks up the vacuum, supplies and is handed a contract. Now her boyfriend at the time took several business courses and he knew the in and outs of contracts. All the contracts he needed for his own business he wrote himself.

In reading the contract she showed him he told her all the promises and such the manager made were not in the contract and it was all geared to screw her over. She did a required demo for my mother and office guy told her she would get paid for her "training. Not so said the contract. She starts questioning certain things in the contract after making her mandatory phone call after the demo and he was pissed! Manager told her he did not have time to talk to her even though he required her to call him.

Needless to say she dropped off everything they had given her first thing the next morning along with the "contract" which she ripped in half before she left. I could have saved her the trouble of it all because the wrong sign thing sent up a red flag but I am the mom and do not know what I am talking about