Top 10 Most Embarrassing Things To Do At A Job Interview
#1 - Slip and fall down the stairs as the Interviewer shows you the way out
… and don’t let the door hit you in the ass on your way out.
Yes, it is true. Just when you thought the humiliation couldn’t get any worse. You fall on your ass.
Any other embarrassing things that could have topped that?
Farting?
Blathering on and on about my imaginary friend?
Come on kids - earn your keep. Your secret will be safe with me. (And with the rest of the internets)
how about walking out after an interview with a guy only a couple years older than you, and realizing the two top buttons of your shirt were unbuttoned the whole time. (I do wear a bra, thank god)
Even more crushing, the girls DIDN’T get me the job!
06 Nov 2007 at 12:12 pm
It’s been a long long time since I’ve had to interview, but I will share this tidbit with you:
When I went to do my morning pumping session just now, I opened my nursing bra, and there was still fabric there - very confusing. Took me about 45 seconds to realize I’d put a 2nd bra on over the 1st. I of course had to share with my male co-worker who was wondering at the confused muttering and subsequent gales of laughter.
06 Nov 2007 at 12:26 pm
how about using the word anal more than once in the interview - seriously. i was interviewed panel style by three people, only one of whom i’d met before. i seriously had to sit on my hands they were flailing around so much and no joking i said anal twice.
surprising i got the job!
06 Nov 2007 at 12:32 pm
So I had a pretty good interview with two very nice men at an Einstein’s Bagels. When the interview was over, they offered to get me something to eat. I jumped out of my chair and BOLTED out the door. Once I’m outside, I realize I didn’t say thank you, didn’t say goodbye, didn’t say anything. So I hang around in the parking lot until they came out to their cars. I wasn’t anywhere near their cars, so I just yelled, “Thanks! Nice to meet you!” and jumped into my car.
I was MORTIFIED. But I got the job. (It helped that my best friend was going to be my boss.)
06 Nov 2007 at 12:42 pm
A friend told me that she only realized she had baby poo on her arm AFTER the interview. She just kept wondering where the smell was coming from.
06 Nov 2007 at 12:53 pm
I’ll delurk for this one.
I got my first job two years ago, when I was 17. It was a little family owned shop, so no interview, just chatting and the owner offering me a job.
I only found out two months later than she had though I was 21 AND married. I take that as a compliment, but sheesh! I wasn’t even wearing a ring.
06 Nov 2007 at 12:57 pm
You could have leaked breast milk. That would have been even more embarassing, yes?
06 Nov 2007 at 1:15 pm
I once had a job interview that I thought had gone fairly well. It had gone on forever and I was excited for it to be over because they passed me around to everyone in the entire department - so I was pretty wiped out. I was so happy for the interview to be over and quickly left the building and walked outside and saw that my my car was gone. Gone!
It was parked in one of those two hours or less spaces and I swear I had only been in the interview abou - but non-the-less… my car was definitely gone.
It was not in the best part of town in baltimore, so I didn’t want to roam. I ended up having to go back inside with my tail between my legs and explain what happened and ask to use the phone. (This was before cell phones were commonplace).
They kind of looked at me like…. you parked in the 2 hour spot didn’t you. Yeah - I didn’t get the job…
06 Nov 2007 at 1:42 pm
At least you have a story.
Who knows? You might get that job.
06 Nov 2007 at 1:44 pm
I could go on and on - not from personal experience, but because I used to work in recruiting.
You could have hyperventalated and required a medical team to be called in.
You could have over slept on an interview that the company paid to fly you to, and required that hotel staff knock on your door to make sure nothing bad had happened.
06 Nov 2007 at 2:14 pm
When I use to work on the ski hill as a lift supervisor, I always kept my backpack stocked with feminine products just in case any of the female lift operators needed emergency FP. One day the government lift inspector showed up for a surprise inspection of the ski lifts and it was my job to tour him around. As I made room for him on the snowmobile, I swung my backpack off the back and whoosh….80 gazillion tampons went flying all over the place. Totally professional!
06 Nov 2007 at 3:28 pm
I had been in the paralegal biz for about 6 years and had learned the hard way that I’m way too nice for the cutthroat world of law office politics so I decided to find a nice, quiet secretarial position. I answered an ad, got an interview and was doing great until they asked me what I liked/disliked about my current job. Idiot me blathered on and on, finishing up with, ‘I like it because it’s one step up from being just a secretary.’ Open mouth, insert foot. I never heard from them again - no surprise there. ;o)
Good luck! I bet you get the job. :o))
06 Nov 2007 at 3:30 pm
An interviewer once asked me, “If you could have any super power, what would yours be?”
Simple question, right?
Me- I say, “I’d have the ability to bring back the dead.”
And I immediately start to bawl my eyes out.
Yeah, surprisingly I didn’t get a call back.
06 Nov 2007 at 3:33 pm
Think about it this way…at least you made an impression.
And I’ve got a story for you - it happened AFTER I got the job, but was no less mortifying.
My boss and our department admin were talking about how clutzy we all are, and I mentioned that I have a tendency to fall down a lot, which is surprising given the size of my feet. Fast forward a few minutes and I am sitting in my boss’ cube, and we’re just shooting the shit, and I…slide. right. out. of. the. chair. onto. the. floor.
I just slid right off the chair onto my knees on the floor.
I had been working for her for about 4 days.
And yes, she laughed her a@@ off.
06 Nov 2007 at 3:33 pm
OMG, Wendy, that’s pretty funny. With a job interview that required a writing sample, I forgot spell check on the subject line. I’d spelled the name of the job title incorrectly in my thank you note. Nice, huh?
06 Nov 2007 at 4:08 pm
How timely of a subject since I started looking for a new job this summer and have been on several interviews since then.
During my first interview I was asked “What do you want to be when you grow up?”!!! I thought what kind of stupid question is that? So I replied with, “If I knew that I wouldn’t be here.” Needless to say I didn’t get the position.
06 Nov 2007 at 4:37 pm
Oh, god, interviews are just the staging area for humiliation. I’ve been interviewing a lot lately and the worst thing that happened recently was at the end of the interview, too - it was in the city, and my interviewer walked me out of the building, where I promptly got BOTH OF THE HEELS OF MY SHOES stuck in a sidewalk grate. So I’m standing there, literally stuck, saying “Thank you, it was so nice to meet you,” and trying not to make it obvious that I can’t move because my shoes are stuck. After about two minutes of me standing there like an idiot, she finally said goodbye and I had to take off my shoes and jerk them out of the sidewalk grate in my suit. At least she didn’t see me, but I’m sure I looked completely bizarre for just standing stock still, right outside the building, for no reason at all.
06 Nov 2007 at 5:28 pm
These made me giggle.
I don’t tend to have the horrifying moments in interviews, but I am definitely willing to talk about anything and everything. A lot of times what comes out of my head doesn’t strike me as wrong, but it does to a lot of other people.
I’ve come out of tons of interviews feeling like a million bucks only to have the recruiting office (I often interviewed as temp to perm) call me back and ask me what I said and what did I mean by it.
Whoops!
06 Nov 2007 at 6:14 pm
When I was first interviewing for jobs in public accounting (on-campus interviews, this one was with PriceWaterhouse Coopers), and with interview week being super hectic I was up really late in the library one night finishing up a project. When I was leaving the library, in a daze of exhaustion at like 2am, the huge, old, very heavy wooden door slammed on my finger, clamping my engagement ring down and causing my finger to turn blue and swell disgustingly.
My interview was first thing in the morning, and I sat through an hour of it, in pain, and watching the interviewer’s barely disguised disgust? disbelief? It was like the pink elephant in the room. As soon as it was over (and the jewelry store in town opened) I ran over and had to have the ring cut off.
(And PwC was the only Big 5 accounting firm to not offer me a job out of school.
06 Nov 2007 at 6:42 pm
I’ve had several humiliating interivew experiences, but favorite one is… As the woman interviewing me was directing me towards the conference room, I was waving to a friend that worked there and didn’t see the woman turn back towards me. I collided with her and knocked the coffee cup in her hand, spilling coffee all over her suede jacket and silk blouse. Even with ruining her clothes, I got the job offer. Which I proceeded to turn down. I bet that woman loved me!
07 Nov 2007 at 12:44 am
Oh lordy, these are making me howl with laughter. I was looking to join another doctor in private practice, and my hubby and I were invited for dinner at his home. We showed up, with a nice bottle of wine, all dressed up, on the WRONG fracking night. He was polite enough to invite us in, and even fed us leftovers. We did become partners, after all, but it was mighty embarrassing.
07 Nov 2007 at 2:33 am
So weird, I don’t think my comments posted the first time.
Anyway, I used to BE a recruiter, so we’ve seen some inane stuff. There was the woman who hyperventalated during the interview, requiring medical personnel to be called, as well as a guy who slept through the hotel alarm and didn’t show for his interview. Since we recruited law students and not all of them had been to DC before, we make sure they show up just so that we know they’re okay. With the sleeping guy, we had have the hotel staff enter his room - turns out he was just a heavy sleeper… oh well.
And the woman who hyperventaled…? She got the job.
07 Nov 2007 at 9:48 am
Well, on the first day of work, I was sitting in my boss’ office when I accidentally knocked over my 20 oz coffee all over her desk. My new job was in communications editing publications and responding to proposals…let’s just say my coffee cup was in one of the few bare spots on her desk.
Well, for the next several months documents from that disaster would show up at meetings with big coffee stains.Ugh.
07 Nov 2007 at 11:47 am
I once had a woman refuse a job offer because I was one of the people interviewing her and she thought I was nuts and highly unprofessional. She was very intuitive and entirely correct.
I now flatly refuse to ever interview anyone.
07 Nov 2007 at 12:39 pm
I don’t have an interview story of my own- but I have once in my life done the classic sent-an-email-to-my-boss-instead-of-my-coworker-by-mistake. And it might have been bitching about said boss. Who was an a$$, but still. Surprisingly, I didn’t get fired. Which, considering how unhappy I was at the job, might have actually been my true punishment.
09 Nov 2007 at 10:48 am
I went to a job interview in September and when I sat down in the interviewer’s office, I knocked his phone into the trash can.
I got the job, though.
11 Nov 2007 at 8:32 pm
Here’s one from the other side of the desk. An optical shop I worked at in Idaho was interviewing new sales people. My store manager, assistant manager, and regional manager were all interviewing candidates together, and all showed up wearing black suits. The first two candidates also showed up wearing black suits. When the third candidate walked in also wearing a black suit, my assistant manager Angie said, “Well, it’s black day today!”
The third candidate was African American. I think Angie just about died.
12 Nov 2007 at 5:25 am
I once was interviewing for a pharmacy technician job in a retail store. I was exhausted from a long day (had to go out of town to nearest unemployment office after my factory closed) and this was a spur of a moment interview that happened when I asked if there were any job openings there. I was there to pick up my inlaws prescriptions and in the last hour they were open. I was told to sit on the bench and wait for the pharmacist to interview me. I panicked shortly for I was in blue jeans, well-worn shirt, athletic shoes, hair not so great and so exhausted. She was about 10 min getting out to talk to me. I had dozed off so when I woke up I was so groggy and out of it that I had to really think to speak my replies to her questions. She talked slowly and was boring on top of that. Then proceeded to sneeze this strange sneeze for about 15 times. After the first few I said “God bless you” and then just tried to ignore it til she stopped. And it was odd, got the interview first, then told to bring in resume (which I had done, but was at home) which was kind of backwards. I felt uncomfortable around her and she wasn’t at ease with me. I was sent to take a drug test the next day, but didn’t think I’d get the job. Weeks went by and heard nothing. About 5 weeks after the interview the phone rang and it was the pharmacist asking me if I wanted the job. I almost fainted, but took it. She never warmed up to me and I didn’t warm up to her, but I made a great tech and was asset to the pharmacy so it all worked out well. I’d still be there, but had to move 1500 miles away and not able to find a position in a pharmacy again. I used to wonder how bad the other interviews went if I got picked and had a lousy one.
14 Mar 2008 at 6:08 pm