Been interviewing for a role in the Beaker Bazaar.
And you know how it is. On electronic paper, the CV's great. Every box ticked. Every requirement met. So you bring them in, anxious to meet the genius who meets every one of the 94 criteria of the perfect Beaker shop assistant.
And three minutes in you know this will all be wrong. And maybe it's them or maybe it's you, but this ain't gonna work.
But you're booked for an hour. And you're a human being, and so are they. And you can't just chuck them out after three minutes. So you spend 57 more minutes asking questions that don't matter because you're not listening.
Which means that, in order to be nice, you've wasted 57 minutes of their time, and 57 minutes of your own. Because you know you couldn't be that swine who would throw them out after three minutes.
Which is why the Beaker interview room has a trapdoor under the interviewee's chair. Saves 57 minutes of everyone's time. And you don't have to look them in the eye.
The chapel at Gloucestershire Royal Hospital has a trapdoor in the Chaplain's office. The chapel is built on stilts in a lake. When you open the trapdoor you can see the fish swimming in the water. We used to joke that this is where heretics were fed to the piranhas. Interviewees would be a welcome change in the diet
ReplyDeleteI remember as a child being taken to see an old friary (I think it was grey friars) in Canterbury, where they had a trapdoor over in the kitchen for catching fish (I suppose it must have been build over the river) for Friday dinner.
DeleteThe good thing about interviews is that you see all the aspects of human creativity on the CV and than compare the reality with the CV. It teaches you much about constructive lying and deceit and you know that you can give feedback about being a poor liar in the rejection letter.
ReplyDeleteAlternatively, the trapdoor is a fine idea.
The trapdoor would also be handy for those interviewees who spin out the answer to even the simplest question until the interview panel loses the will to live.
ReplyDelete