Worst interview ever #2: Hospitality pit-brawl
It's time for me to tell you all about Worst Job Interview Ever #2, except that I'm falling asleep and my laptop battery has 20 minutes left. Let's get to the point.
It went something like this...
I was in college, and desperate to secure one of approximately 19.4 summer jobs available in the entire county in which I attended school. It so happened that, to greedily maximize its grossly handsome school year profits, the college rented out its squalid blocks of dorm buildings as some sort of summer "satellite" hotel (for what sort of squalor-loving, hallway-bathroom craving guests I'm not entirely certain).
These dubious accommodations were entirely staffed and operated by an aggressively extroverted team of can-do college sophomores, making minimum wage. Campus jobs were the gold standard of summer employment, for reasons that I can't comprehend in retrospect: teams of fresh-scrubbed college kid rubes did all manner of lowly tasks around the campus for a pittance, and fought for the privilege.
My battery is now at :15 so I'll get to the point: I wanted one of these jobs. And so I donned my 20-year-old's version of an interview suit:
Imagine my dismay when, rather like an early round of eliminations for American Idol, I was corralled with a startling number of desperate young fellow-hopefuls in an interview room, which as it happened, was a vast conference table headed up by a brisk woman with a hard smile and a barking voice. "Welcome, future hospitality team!" she brayed.
Uh oh.
She then handed out a series of scripts to the crowd, and informed us that we would be role playing as satellite concierges, as she read off an increasingly difficult series of hotel challenge scenarios. Whoever had the hardest smile and the barkingest voice, whoever was the loudest and pushiest and smiliest and bossiest and most outgoing and steam-rollingest, would make it to the next round. The others?
They would leave.
Let us break here to enjoy an actual quote from a recent personality profile I was compelled to take at work:
She may be seen by others as distant, unfeeling, skeptical, not interested in people, and even arrogant..."
Um.
And so, I just stood there watching my fellow concierge-wannabees barking and role-playing and one-upping for only but a moment, and then I slinked out a side door, and walked home with my head hanging in defeat.
It went something like this...
I was in college, and desperate to secure one of approximately 19.4 summer jobs available in the entire county in which I attended school. It so happened that, to greedily maximize its grossly handsome school year profits, the college rented out its squalid blocks of dorm buildings as some sort of summer "satellite" hotel (for what sort of squalor-loving, hallway-bathroom craving guests I'm not entirely certain).
These dubious accommodations were entirely staffed and operated by an aggressively extroverted team of can-do college sophomores, making minimum wage. Campus jobs were the gold standard of summer employment, for reasons that I can't comprehend in retrospect: teams of fresh-scrubbed college kid rubes did all manner of lowly tasks around the campus for a pittance, and fought for the privilege.
My battery is now at :15 so I'll get to the point: I wanted one of these jobs. And so I donned my 20-year-old's version of an interview suit:
- oversized, thrift-store man's vest from a cheap suit
- pair of pinstriped elastic-waistband harem pants from Ross Dress for Less
Imagine my dismay when, rather like an early round of eliminations for American Idol, I was corralled with a startling number of desperate young fellow-hopefuls in an interview room, which as it happened, was a vast conference table headed up by a brisk woman with a hard smile and a barking voice. "Welcome, future hospitality team!" she brayed.
Uh oh.
She then handed out a series of scripts to the crowd, and informed us that we would be role playing as satellite concierges, as she read off an increasingly difficult series of hotel challenge scenarios. Whoever had the hardest smile and the barkingest voice, whoever was the loudest and pushiest and smiliest and bossiest and most outgoing and steam-rollingest, would make it to the next round. The others?
They would leave.
Let us break here to enjoy an actual quote from a recent personality profile I was compelled to take at work:
She may be seen by others as distant, unfeeling, skeptical, not interested in people, and even arrogant..."
Um.
And so, I just stood there watching my fellow concierge-wannabees barking and role-playing and one-upping for only but a moment, and then I slinked out a side door, and walked home with my head hanging in defeat.
posted by Strikethru at
8:53 PM
2 Comments:
Don't listen to the personality people - you're just arrogant because you're better than them, and who wouldn't be distant from a bunch of bellevue-living, bush-voting yuppie-yokels. They know nothing - they even called me judgmental!
So you were compelled as part of your job to take a test to tell you that you're not the winner of the team's Miss Congeniality award...
I sincerely hope the mission of your company is to produce world-class homecoming queens. They sure won't be producing world-class anything else.
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