Employer Tests Patience of Job Seekers in a Pretty Sadistic Way

A Twitter user's post that was supposed to provide an inspirational message for hungry job seekers ended up falling flat on its face — mainly because the interviewer in the story had a bit of a sadistic streak.

When you're unemployed and desperately seeking out work, every single job opportunity feels like a live-or-die situation. It's almost primal in a way — your heart rate is increased ever so slightly as you walk into that interview office.

You rehearse all of the possible responses to questions they might ask, you wear your favorite "first impression" outfit, and make sure not a single hair on your head is out of place. And, of course, you make sure to arrive, not just on time for the interview, but slightly early.

As eager as you are for a job, however, the interview is as much for you as it is for whoever's offering the job. If you're skilled and enthusiastic, whoever's hiring you should show as much courtesy and respect as you do. If you're on time, then they should be too, right?

This expectation might be why so many took issue with this gentlemen's tweet. @Jerrydoubles, aka, "The Idea Junkie" relayed a story on his Twitter account about an employer asking six candidates to come to the office for an interview at 7 a.m. His only request was that they sit in the waiting room and well... wait.

Six hours went by before three people finally threw in the towel and decided they weren't waiting any longer. By the time 6 p.m. hit, only two of the original six candidates were still in the waiting room. When the employer came back to the waiting room, he hired them on the spot — because the apparently the objective was to find people who would wait in a room for eleven hours because a stranger told them to.

Unsurprisingly, a bunch of folks had a problem with this tale and the implied moral that hopeful employees should toss their dignity and all other responsibilities in the toilet just because their maybe-future-boss thinks they should spend more than a full work day sitting in a chair doing nothing. 

The most obvious question is: what kind of person would have no issue with sitting for that long? Whoever was hiring for the position was clearly only looking for the biggest pushovers in the world who place zero value on their time. Makes perfect sense: hire someone who'll literally take any treatment you dish out to them. Brilliant!

That doesn't mean that severe dedication to a job won't pay off. Sylvester Stallone got his first acting gig by camping outside of a casting director's office and toiled like a madman to get his dreams off of the ground. The difference, however, is Sly knew when to stand up for himself when it came to producing Rocky after the studio tried getting other top name actors to play the part.

As it turns out, this interviewer isn't the first to play weird mind games with job seekers. In a recent AskReddit thread, commenters shared experiences with job interviews that made them "nope" the heck out of there. Turns out that there are tons of weird and borderline psychotic methods employers use to weed out hopeful workers.

In fact, a lot of the little tricks seemed borderline illegal or, at the very least, extremely dishonest and two-faced. From hoodwinking people into interviewing for door-to-door sales jobs under the guise of customer service or IT postings, to vague or dishonest reporting on wages, these stories are absolutely bonkers.

The most troubling of them all, however, were the sheer number of depressing stories about interviews in schools that painted a really sad picture of the future of education. We're talking defeated teachers and staff members, kids being allowed to run rampant in the hallways with no regard for authority, and, in some instances, people working while extremely ill.

Although I've interviewed with some scam agencies who asked for "administrative fee" payments and have stormed out of my fair share of pyramid scheme situations, I feel like the schools I went to were more or less pretty good, and I've got some great jobs and work experiences since then.

From the looks of it, though, I feel like I'm in the minority. #Blessed.