Interesting Interview

To celebrate my 5 year anniversary at the fine company I work for I have decided to entertain you by describing a job interview we had nearly 4 and a half years ago. I believe this was the first interview that we held were I wasnt being the one interviewed so naturally it left an impression on me. Or perhaps the impression was left by the man we interviewed.

So as the interview time approached I headed over to the small, oval-shaped meeting table located in the middle of our office. I patiently waited for our mystery guest to enter the glass door that is the entrance to our office, however, the interview time came and went without a brisk breeze being let into our office.

Five minutes pass and I head over to the wall window and peer outside just as a blonde flash runs into the building and into our office. I walk over to this man and before I - or anyone else for that matter - can get a word out he states that he needs to find the bathroom because he “just finished a diet Pepsi and that stuff just runs right through me.” After the passing of our initial shock in regards to his bluntness my co-workers and I headed back to the meeting table and waited for his return.

A few minutes later he came back into the office and literally shook his overcoat off, revealing a tiny man in a navy blue sports coat, a light blue and white (and wrinkled) striped dress shirt, an awful red and white tie, and khaki pants (also wrinkled). He looked like the perfect arian republican, in sloppy clothes. Or perhaps a captain without his captain’s hat. He put his coat down and stepped over to the meeting table, offering a handshake to each of us. I quickly declined with the memory of his recent bathroom trip still floating around in my head. I wanted to give him a pat on the shoulder, but I refrained.

The interview progresses as our interviews usually do: we told him about our company and what we do (which, apparently, was something he already knew in great detail) and then we started asking him questions. Now I dont remember the questions that we asked him, but I do remember how adamant he was in his responses. He expressed a great need for the transportation industry, as a whole, to go through an overhaul. He used many hand gestures, which was quite comical because he had a bent finger that kept pointing in the wrong direction.

We asked about his childhood and he mentioned that instead of playing with normal toys like GI Joe or Transformers, he always pretended that he was a police officer or a planner and would set up routes and roads for his friends to traverse. He would use chalk to stripe his driveway into his dream roadway and then he would have his friends come over and he would direct them as they road around on their big wheels.

He also mentioned that he collected all sorts of transportation memorabilia, and that the prize of his collection was a traffic signal. Not a signal like on the wall of Mr. Rogers’ house, mind you, no, an actual traffic signal made by the same company that makes all the signals in Pennsylvania. As far as he knew, he was the only private citizen to own such an exquisite item.

To demonstrate just how dedicated he was to transportation he mentioned that he had a website (and I truly wish I could give you the link to this website, but alas, the last thing I need is legal troubles caused by slander) and that he started a web ring for all transportation sites.

When we asked him if he had any questions for us, his first – and only – question was how he could gain access to PennDOT’s archives. Because that is really what PennDOT needs, a psychopath going through their past and doing an antiquated critique. Needless to say we did not tell him how to gain access to that information. That was the right move to do; I mean he could have been looking for schematics to help him piece together his plan to rid Pennsylvania of all minorities.

As quickly as the interview started, it ended. He shook hands with everyone again, and again I declined, but not because of his recent bathroom visit, this time I was scared of the dangling finger. We quickly decided that we would not hire him, mainly because we felt that he would use the job as a personal platform to get the transportation that he needed.

We then went to visit his website and noticed that a good portion of the site was dedicated to transportation disasters and the band Journey. Interesting combination.

The moral of this story is dont hire people with dangly fingers because they might turn out to be traffic loving crazy people who troll the internet looking for transportation disasters and bad 80s rock.