‘What was your worst job interview?’ – 19 absolute horror shows

Not every job interview will go as well as you’d hoped. But if you think you’ve had it bad, then wait until you read some of these, after UlGrimsen had a question for people on Reddit.

“What was your worst job interview?”

It clearly struck a chord because it prompted the thick end of 3,000 replies. Here are our 19 favourites AKA absolute horror shows.

1.

‘Applied to work at a vet clinic. Veterinarian did the interview while spaying a cat, apparently one of the cleanest and quickest surgeries they do. I fainted. Was not offered the job (after I woke up).’
Remembers_that_time

2.

‘I took vacation days to interview, bought my own plane ticket, and paid for my own hotel. First thing the interviewer said was, “I have no intention of hiring you. This is just a courtesy because I knew your brother.” I had 8 more hours left in my interview day. It was painful.

‘They ended up offering me the position many weeks down the road because they couldn’t fill the position. I politely declined and got a very passive aggressively worded survey to fill out explaining why I passed.

‘Edit: I’m an eye surgeon. This was for a training position at an Ivy League institution.’
seeing_red415

3.

‘1) I walked in as the HR lady farted

‘2) it was a small office with no windows

‘3) I asked her questions about their employee retention rate that she couldn’t answer

‘4) the fart stayed the duration of the interview 5.) I hope the fart got the job, because I didn’t want it.’
RedShadowIV

4.

‘Dude showed up 35 minutes late for his own interview. I wanted to just cancel it and tell him too bad, but my big boss told me to go ahead since we really needed the position filled.

‘Interview starts and he tells us he can only stay for 10 minutes since he’s on call at his other job while here with us and that technically he’s supposed to be no more than 10 minutes away from his site – which is an hour away. I asked him what he’ll do if he gets a call while he’s at the interview: “Oh, I always just turn the phone off and pretend there’s bad service.”‘
kor_hookmaster

5.

‘Got interviewd by the worst person ever. One question was and I am legit not lying, “What is your favorite color and why?” I answered “baby blue because it’s calming and not to harsh to the eyes.” My interviewer then said Oooh, sorry! Red is what we were looking for. And then proceeded to show me the exit.’
JamesDelRey

6.

‘I showed up in person for a phone interview. I have NO idea how I got myself in that position. I looked up the address on my own and everything.

‘I sat around waiting to be interviewed for 1/2 hour because the interviewer was in his office trying to call me. Of course, my phone was off. I wasn’t offered another interview, and rightfully so.’
NotCleverNamesTaken

7.

‘I applied for a job in a Planetarium, the interview was conducted in a big dome. Problem was, another part of the Planetarium staff was doing fire alarm tests during the interview. The dome amplified the sound so much, it was deafening. The interview staff acted like nothing was going on. We had to shout so we could hear each other.’
Quaternaire

8.

‘Interviewed someone for a call center job and when we got to the salary part, he takes out his phone, calls his mother, and puts her on speakerphone to help negotiate his salary (like he was getting a job in the C-suite). Did not get hired.’
AUSavage

9.

‘Interviewed someone for a servers position in a club, she said she couldn’t work weekends or past 8pm. We’re a nightclub that’s open from 7pm till 2am.’
CanineRezQ

10.

‘I was interviewing a guy once and asked him why he wanted the job. He replied, ‘Well that’s a stupid f-cking question.’
VaDem33