I AM RETARDED AT JOB INTERVIEWS

ROBERT FOSTER

I do not come across well on first impressions. I have a permanently bored expression, dress really scruffily and am always cagey around people I don’t know.

Because of the above -and a whole lot more- job interviews are an absolute fucking nightmare for me, I always do something truly, truly awful to put my foot in it and mess them up. Here are four occasions that I completely ballsed it, followed by helpful/patronising “what I learned from my mistake” line.

During an interview for a position as a primary school assistant, I said I didn’t really like kids.
Pretty bad move huh? Well, I obviously didn’t mean to say that, it just came out wrong. The interviewer was waxing on about you had to cut the emotional cord with little tykes so you could discipline the kids.  Basically you should deliberately make them hate you.  My response to that?  ‘well, I don’t mind being harsh, I hate kids!’
It was a JOKE, which I thought was totally hilarious and made me seem approachable and self- effacing, but this guy seemed to think otherwise and wrapped it up pretty much immediately after I dropped that kiddy clanger.

What I learned: Humor is not appropriate in the context of childcare.

I turned up drunk
By drunk I don’t mean hammered, and it was to an interview for a pub…so not the worst thing in the world.  But I’d had two pints down the road with the people I’d partied with the night before, so I was a bit shaky.  Plus I hadn’t changed my clothes, and they were crispy with dried up stale Reef.  I also fell over when I walked in the pub due to running across the road with an untied shoe.  So it started badly, and then got much worse.  Mid way through interview I sat down with the publican to talk about how to pour Guinness, and managed to be sick on myself.  I think that was due to the invigorating loose-shoe-run shaking up my tender stomach’s contents from the night before.

I got up and walked out silently with my head held high.

What I learned: sometimes it’s best to cancel.

I came onto the interviewer
People in fashion retail fall into two categories - those who started when they left School and boycotted Uni, and then mugs like me who signed up after three years at Art College.  This means the young ‘uns climb the ranks before the degree kids, so often your boss/potential employer is three years younger than you and probably really hot as well.  In the case of this interview, the girl supervisor was smoking hot, and I got really into the way she was asking me stern questions, like a sexy shoe fiend.  Miraculously I managed to hold it down during the interview, and was possibly close to being on the employment track.  I fucked it up though, obviously.

Later that night I was out and a little drunk and I saw her in this bar and gave her my A game, just the best ever.  I was funny, charming and really worked every angle.  The only problem was her boyfriend was with her and bizarrely he didn’t like me, or my A game, so he tried to punch me on the nose.  I didn’t yet the job.

What I learned: keep it in your pants until the contracts in the bag.

I said I didn’t want the job at all
It’s true, I didn’t. Who the fuck wants to work in a paper warehouse for a living? I mean, no disrespect to paper warehouse workers, but I’m pretty sure there is something else that ALL of them would rather be doing. Perhaps that’s not the best thing to say in an interview though…the interviewer’s question was: “why do you want to work here?” and I truthfully replied, “well, obviously there’s a few other things I would prefer to do”.  FAIL.  He was a bit sneaky though, and carried on the interview as normal, asking chirpily, “like what?”

“Oh I don’t know, lots of things…”

“Well, if you don’t want to do the job, why are you even here?”

Whoops.  I didn’t really know what to say.

What I learned: That I have a genuine problem and I am almost certainly never going to get into gainful employment.