Job Interviews from the Dark Side, Part 7

Not all job interviews from the dark side involve potentially illegal questions, sometimes they're just experiences that make me wonder what the interviewer's motivation was. One job-search experience that has me puzzled to this day involves an application I made at a particular Barnes & Noble.

A day or two after I filled out my application that expressed my interest in working as a bookstore clerk, the store's manager called me about an interview. Of course, silly me, I assumed she wanted to talk to me about working as a bookstore clerk.

I got appropriately dressed and groomed, got to the interview on time, went into the manager's office, and started talking about my sales experience and my love of books. The woman's nose was so high in the air it practically scraped the ceiling. 

"I'm just looking for someone to work my coffee counter, and you'll just quit after a few days," she declared, as if somebody died and made her God.

I asked her why she'd called me for an interview, if that was what she wanted and that was what she thought of me. Her nose came down off the ceiling, she was looking at the floor now. She mumbled something about, "Sometimes you just want to look someone over."

What did she expect me to do? Burst into a "Hey, look me over!" song and dance? Get down on my knees and beg for a chance to please, please, let me get behind her coffee counter, please, please?

I kept talking about how I would like to work as a bookstore clerk, and could she please keep me in mind for future openings, and she practically herded me out of her office, and wouldn't even look at me as I tried to end the interview on some kind of positive note. It was like she was afraid someone might see us together.

So why did she waste her time and mine? Some people have suggested, "She found out you weren't some young chick," but if she had actually bothered to read my application beyond my name and phone number, she could've figured that out and just not bothered to call me in the first place. 

Who was she to just predict the future based on what she saw and heard when I walked in the door? Couldn't she have summoned the courtesy to ask, "Well, I saw that you're applying for sales clerk, but would you consider working at the coffee counter?" She could've lied and said it was just for a few days until she could get a "real" barista, or pull the "you can transfer to the sales floor" bait-and-switch routine. That's the one where you promise the prospective employee, yes, yes, we can transfer you, until the person actually starts the job, and then turn around and tell them, "we don't transfer between those two positions."

Either she needed someone to work her coffee counter or she didn't. If she was desperate enough to just pick up my application and call me without even reading it, what would it matter to her whether I quit after a few days, if she could get a few days' work out of me? On the other hand, if she wasn't desperate enough to just hire me for the sake of hiring a warm body, then why did she bother?

She couldn't even muster the common decency to blow me off with, "Well, if I do get an opening to work the bookstore section, I'll keep you in mind." I've been filled with loathing for that particular Barnes & Noble branch ever since.