rSlash - r/Askreddit What Made You Walk Out of a Job Interview?

Episode Date: October 31, 2021

r/Askreddit Have you ever had a terrible job interview? Your experience probably doesn't come close to these AWFUL interview stories. We've got a story from one guy who was literally locked inside the building and couldn't escape. The interviewers called him to scold him for not showing up on time, and he had to beg them to let him out. Another person showed up for an interview at a school, and the teacher at the school were wearing blackface 😲 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome to R-Slash, a podcast where I read the best posts from across Reddit. Today's subreddit is R-Slash Ascreddit where we answer the question, people who walked out of a job interview, why'd you do it? Our first reply is from Wonder brawl. It was a pyramid scheme advertised as sales and marketing. It was a group interview. They served wine for F-sake. They had obvious stuages initiating conversation with people about how great the opportunity was.

I got very drunk and I stopped being polite about it. Man, when I was in college, like my freshman year, I met this guy and like after talking for a bit, he invited me out to like get a coffee or something and I was like, cool, I just made a friend, that's neat. And I get there the next day and after talking for like five minutes, he starts going on about, I want to say Amway. Could it have been Amway? I don't really remember, but it was some kind of stupid BS pyramid scheme, and I was like, oh man, you don't want to be my friend, this is just a pyramid scheme. So I just finished my T and left, our next

reply is from Snowmizer. I wasn't informed about the evidently very strict building security prior to the interview. The front door was practically unmarked and you had to swipe a card to get in, but there was no intercom. The elevators required a card as well, but the stairs didn't. However, no one told me that the stairwells are locked from the outside, meaning I was locked in the stairwell with no way to get out. I called the recruiter over and over, and even called the front desk, but they just kept putting me on hold instead of sending someone to let me in at the correct floor. I ended up getting a call from the recruiter while I was still stuck in the stairwell, telling

me that they wouldn't be going forward with the interview because I was late. I almost screamed, and I asked her as calmly as I could manage if she had gotten any of the messages I left for her, letting her know that I was currently stuck in the stairwell and I couldn't get out. She said that she hadn't and that it was too late anyway because they had gone with another candidate. She almost hung up on me before I could yell, then can someone please come free me from the stairwell so I can leave?

They sent security to get me, and I was treated like a criminal as I was led from the building. I've never been so confused, humiliated, and angry in my entire life. I left them a scathing review on Glassdoor. Opie, I feel like if they didn't let you out, I wonder if you could just, you know, call 911 and be like, hello, I think I've been kidnapped by a building. There are people here and they could let me out, but they won't. So help me, I think, I guess, I think I'm kidnapped. Can you come get me please? Or if you don't want to call the cops, I think you could probably call the local fire department too because this has to be some kind of fire violation, right? Certainly if there's a fire you're supposed to escape the building through the stairwell, but if the stairwell doors are locked from the outside, then that basically turns the stairwell into a giant oven where people will be cooked alive because they can't escape the building. Yeah, this feels, this feels illegal to me.

This has to be illegal, right? Okay, down beneath this story, there's another story, which is pretty long, so I wasn't sure if I was going to include it, but it's just so bizarre and surreal, I feel like I have to read it. This story is from Coinpile. I was trying to get to this street from a parking garage once, and it looked like you went through a door, took a ride, and then you'd be outside. I went through the door, found nothing to the right,

but a locked door, and I couldn't leave because the door locked behind me. So all I could do was wander farther down the hallway. Occasionally, another door would lock behind me. It was nothing but research labs with shuttered windows, locked key-car doors, security cameras, and break rooms. Eventually, a door locked behind me and left me in a room with two elevator doors in a fire stairwell with a sign saying not to open it because an alarm would sound. One of the elevator doors was opened, revealing an empty shaft. Eventually, I just opened the fire stairwell door. No alarm sounded. There was nowhere

to go but up, so I went up. Oddly, it led to a nice room that didn't look at all where a fire stairwell should lead to. The stairs just went up one flight and ended. So, I wandered around some more. This time, I was in a hallway that was circular, as in the walls curved up like they were a tube, but the whole thing was carpeted and the doors looked like hotel doors. I should note that, at no point thus far, had I seen a single person, and it was Friday morning. Eventually, I took a left and saw a large set of double doors. I could see people who looked like scientists on the other side wearing white lab coats and everything. I turned around to see one of them walking towards me. He took one look at me and asked if I was lost.

I told him I was and asked him to please tell me how to get out. He said go down the hall, take the stairs up to the ground level and then I would be in a front lobby. Apparently, I managed to travel two stories underground despite starting a ground level and never walking down any stairs. I found myself standing in a bank lobby, walked outside and found my to travel two stories underground despite starting at ground level and never walking down any stairs. I found myself standing in a bank lobby, walked outside, and found myself two city blocks away from where I entered two hours earlier. Yes, I was actually trapped wondering around for two straight hours. I have no idea why there was a mostly empty sprawling underground research lab under Fort Worth, Texas. It was one of the most bizarre experiences that I've ever had.

O.P., the story reads like some sort of bizarre sci-fi, horror, psychological thriller movie. You know, like something out of the SCP documents or whatever. Or it feels like O.P. was some lab rat in a giant maze that was designed to test out what people would do when they were lost in a confusing situation, and as he's like panicked and running around the basement of this dystopian non-uclidean nightmare, all these scientists with clipboards are watching the security cameras being like, hmm, interesting, he took the right turn. It's like, why are there scientists and lab codes

underneath a bank? This is just getting weirder and weirder the more that I think about it. Our next reply is from Look Sharp. I sat down with the owner, and the first thing he said to me was, I don't hire people with beards. I said, okay, and I got up and walked out. Beneath that, we have this story from PME or Smiling Face.

I remember hearing a story about an engineer who went to a headhunter to help him find a job. He was told first thing that he had to shave off his beard. The headhunter lands him a group interview with an engineering firm. He walks into the room having noticeable tan lines on his face because he had just shaved his beard. And each of the male face because he had just shaved his beard. And each of the male engineers who were interviewing him had a beard. Our next reply is from Neola Buck. I applied for a software developer position for an online retailer.

The first round of interviews was a traditional technical skills and whiteboarding coding session, and the second round was a cultural fit interview with HR. I assumed the second interview was going to be a one-on-one interview with HR, but it was a room with 20-something people applying from anything from legal to finance. They asked us to stand up, then crawl into a ball and pretend that we were flowers opening. At this point, I honestly thought that it was some kind of prank. Then I saw everybody around me doing it. I just said thanks for the opportunity and left. I have to wonder if there was like some actual real intent behind people

pretending to be flowers like, oh it helps you open up your creative juices or was this literally just the HR people trying to see? Well, these people do literally anything that we ask them to do just because we ask them to do it? Our next reply is from Thumpy Dumcans. I once showed up for a job interview in a suit and tie after answering a newspaper ad for a warehouse worker. Instead of having the job interview at the warehouse, they had me get into some truck with one of the employees who drove me a few hours away, pulled over into some random neighborhood,

and explained to me that the job was going door to door trying to sell cuts of meat to people, unsolicited. I told the guy that this was not the warehouse worker job they'd advertised, and if he didn't bring me back home immediately, I was going to call the cops and report a kidnapping. I was brought back to my car, and I was not paid for the several hours of my wasted time. FU Pacific Prime of Cromwell, Connecticut. So this is a lesson that I unfortunately had to learn on my own when I was in college. If you ever ever have to go to a job interview and part of the requirement is that you get

in a car and they drive you to somewhere else, don't get in the car, it is definitely a scam. Our next reply is from, is this funny to you? I had a phone interview one time and we had it scheduled for noon. The guy called me at 7 a.m. I was still asleep, so when I answered the phone, it took me a moment to figure out what the hell was going on. He said, in this line of work, you should be ready for anything.

Lol. It was a four month position with Fish and Game doing Carcass surveys, as in looking for Dead Sammon. He kept asking a lot of hypothetical questions, like, if you're walking a stream and a guy jumps out of the bushes and points a gun at you, what do you do? Apparently, the correct answer is to call the cops and then get back to work. The questions got nuttier and nuttier and they always involved a guy pointing a gun at me.

Eventually I just said, look, if people are gonna be pointing guns at me, then I do not want this job and I hung up. Our next reply is from Balrog. I showed up and the manager practically bragged about how the job offered no breaks for an eight to 10 hour shift. And if there was a food break,

it would be 5 minutes max at a hip-hide table with no chairs. She said that you would be fired if you sat down for even 30 seconds. I'm more than capable of doing that work. I did that every day on my last job, but when you brag about how your employees are so overworked that they don't even get breaks or an option to rest their legs, it tells me all I need to know about how little you value your employees. I should also note that this job was not paying exceptionally well. It was above minimum wage, but not to a level that was even enough to live on. Our next reply is from DigiDex.

I was interviewed and hired by a call center that focused on getting donations for a number of nonprofit organizations. I was desperate. I was interviewed on Thursday and I was told to show up the following Monday. When I showed up Monday morning, the entire business unit was completely empty, like stripped to the floor with wires hanging from the roof empty. When I was interviewed there the week before, I saw around 20 to 25 cubicles of people all working diligently.

A manager's desk at the far back and waiting area chairs with a table all in one large room. To this day, I have no idea what happened. I just know they got out of there quick in 3 days time. O.P., I can tell you exactly what happened. They were about to get caught on whatever scam or illegal business they were running, so they packed up and moved to a new location. Our next reply from Alpha Hellhound. I once went to a job interview for a large welding shop in the middle of a rainstorm. After talking to the interviewer for 30 or so minutes, he walked me out to the shop floor to take a welding test. The machine we went to was

in decent condition, but it was literally sitting in a puddle of water. The welding tables' legs were rusty and not grounded well, and they were also in that puddle. Over half the shop was flooded. I turned around and said, no thank you, then proceeded to walk out the door. My life is worth a lot more than 20 bucks an hour. Our next reply is from Nixie 9. I applied for a teaching job. At that time, my current job was working at a school for people with disabilities, and this new school was a school for children gifted in a particular field. I was headhunted when one of my students from my current school was accepted into the new school.

The woman interviewing me asked why I wanted to work there, and I explained the situation above. She says, with the most disgusted look on her face. We don't have students like that here. I should point out that I am also disabled, so this was obviously not going to work out. Beneath that, we had this story from Lido. I turned up for an interview at a school once, only a few years ago, and I was greeted by a number of staff in full blackface for some event they were having. Look, I'm not 100% politically correct,

but didn't we stop doing that like 20 years ago? I couldn't work in a place where not only they, but everyone around them thought this was acceptable. Then I realized that every single student, staff member, and parent I'd seen that day at school all day long was white. Opie, I mean, yeah, you're right. Having teachers and students

or whatever going around in blackface is super politically incorrect. But saying that we stopped doing it 20 years ago, that was in 2000, man. Wearing blackface in the year 2000 was still super politically incorrect. So I'd say closer to like 40 or 50 years ago, maybe. Our next reply is from Dave Sex Mechanist.

I was working as a bagger for a grocery store chain when I was 16. I was approached at work by some guy who asked me if I would be interested in making $1100 a week. He told me to meet him in one of the empty businesses in the same plaza after work. He went on this long spiel about the Mella Leuka tree from Australia and how his company made soaps and shampoos out of it. Then he told me that for $500 he would train me on how to sell the products. I just turned and walked out the door with him yelling behind me that I would never

amount to anything with my attitude. So okay, tell me if I'm crazy here, but I'm of the opinion personally that every single high school class, when you're like probably a junior or a sophomore, so old enough to actually start, you know, going out on your own and making semi-adult decisions, I think that one of the mandatory classes should just be a class on how to be an adult. So that includes how to make a resume, how to like do your taxes, how to find government agencies if you have a problem, and also that class should include street-wise stuff.

So like, for example, how to spot a scam. It's just weird to me because scams are so pervasive. And when I was younger, I didn't know anything, and I was really vulnerable to them. And I really wish someone had taken me aside and been like, okay, here's how you spot a scam. This is what they tend to do. This is how they hook you in.

These are the warning signs. This is what you do if you're, you know, getting brought into a scam, because I feel like most people learn about scams by getting burned by a scam. And that kind of sucks because by then it's too late. I mean, really, we teach kids science, math, social studies for like what, 12 years or whatever, but we can't take one class in one semester and set it aside to just hear how you fill out a tax form. Right, am I wrong about this?

Is this too much to ask? Our next reply is from Fumble My End Zone. A high-strung security guard made me walk away from a job before I even got inside the building for an interview. I followed the instructions that I was sent by the hiring manager, which was to park in the designated guest spaces. The security guard came charging out of the building, yelling at me when I was barely out of my car

about how I couldn't park there. Then when I raised my voice just to try to get him to listen, he started yelling at me for yelling at him. Eventually, when I was able to tell him that I was told to park there, he called the hiring manager and started yelling at them about how I'd been yelling at him. Partway through that phone call, I just thought, nah, screw this. Got back in my car and drove off. The hiring manager called me to apologize and asked if I would come back.

I politely declined, saying that I wanted nothing to do with that security guard ever again. Beneath that, we had this toy from IT Chef. I once took my car to an auto shop. The owner was very, very specific about where to park. I parked, and as I was getting out of my car, this guy comes out of the auto shop, screaming his effing head off about how I can't park there because it's for customers only. He was big, loud, angry looking, and I did not want to mess with him. So without a word, I just got in my car and left.

About an hour later, I got a call from that auto shop asking where I was because I'd miss my appointment. It turns out, the owner of the auto shop was the one yelling at me. I laughed my butt off when I told the owner that he cost himself money because he was such a belliger and a hole that he scared me off. Our next reply is from Army of Dog. The job was for a management position running a mail room. This was something I'd done twice before.

All the standard questions were asked and I felt like it was going well. Then the interviewer suddenly says, I'm hearing a lot of the word I from you. I'm concerned because we're about the team and not the individual here. What the hell? This is a job interview and you're concerned that I'm answering questions you've specifically asked about me with answers that address your questions about me. That is utterly nonsensical. I don't even remember how I responded, but I knew that I didn't want to deal with his

stupid semantic word in mind games, which I was sure that I had only seen the surface of, so I steered us right into concluding the interview and I left. I also made a subtle show of taking back the copies of my resume that I'd brought with me. I like how, when this guy was complaining about opes in the word I too much, he started both of those sentences with the word I. I'm hearing a lot of the word I from you. I'm concerned because we're about the team.

Wouldn't it have been better to say something like, this dumbass is concerned because we're about the team here. That was our slash ask Reddit, and if you liked this content, be sure to follow my podcast because I put out new Reddit podcast episodes every single day. new Reddit podcast episodes every single day.