funny interview stories

i came across this list of things people have done in interviews and thought it was pretty funny. some of them seem too bizarre to be true.

• The recruiter asks: What is your greatest weakness? The MBA responds: Kryptonite.
• The recuiter from a tobacco company asks: Do you mind if I smoke? The MBA responds: Yes, I mind. I am allergic to cigarette smoke
• Candidate said he was so well-qualified [that] if he didn't get the job, it would prove that the company's management was incompetent.
• Stretched out on the floor to fill out the job application.
• Brought her large dog to the interview.
• Chewed bubble gum and constantly blew bubbles.
• Candidate kept giggling through serious interview.
• She wore a Walkman and said she could listen to me and the music at the same time.
• Balding candidate abruptly excused himself. Returned to office a few minutes later, wearing a hairpiece.
• Applicant challenged interviewer to arm wrestle.
• Asked to see interviewer's resume to see if the personnel executive was qualified to judge the candidate.
• Announced she hadn't had lunch and proceeded to eat a hamburger and french fries in the interviewer's office.
• Without saying a word, candidate stood up and walked out during the middle of the interview.
• Man wore jogging suit to interview for position as financial vice president.
• Said if he were hired, he would demonstrate his loyalty by having the corporate logo tattooed on his forearm.
• Interrupted to phone his therapist for advice on answering specific interview questions.
• Wouldn't get out of the chair until I would hire him. I had to call the police.
• When I asked him about his hobbies, he stood up and started tap dancing around my office.
• Had a little pinball game and challenged me to play with him.
• Bounced up and down on my carpet and told me I must be highly thought of by the company because I was given such a thick carpet.
• Took a brush out of my purse, brushed his hair and left.
• Pulled out a Polaroid camera and snapped a flash picture of me. Said he collected photos of everyone who interviewed him.
• Candidate asked me if I would put on a suit jacket to insure that the offer was formal.
• Said he wasn't interested because the position paid too much.
• While I was on a long-distance phone call, the applicant took out a copy of Penthouse, and looked through the photos only, stopping longest at the centerfold.
• During the interview, an alarm clock went off from the candidate's brief case. He took it out, shut it off, apologized and said he had to leave for another interview.
• A telephone call came in for the job applicant. It was from his wife. His side of the conversation went like this: "Which company? When do I start? What's the salary?" I said, "I assume you're not interested in conducting the interview any further." He promptly responded, "I am as long as you'll pay me more." I didn't hire him, but later found out there was no other job offer. It was a scam to get a higher offer.
• An applicant came in wearing only one shoe. She explained that the other shoe was stolen off her foot in the bus.
• His attache [case] opened when he picked it up and the contents spilled, revealing ladies' undergarments and assorted makeup and perfume.
• He came to the interview with a moped and left it in the reception area. He didn't want it to get stolen, and stated that he would require indoor parking for the moped.
• He took off his right shoe and sock, removed a medicated foot powder and dusted it on the foot and in the shoe. While he was putting back the shoe and sock, he mentioned that he had to use the powder four times a day, and this was the time.
• Candidate said he really didn't want to get a job, but the employment office needed proof that he was looking for one.
• He whistled when the interviewer was talking.
• Asked who the lovely babe was, pointing to the picture on my desk. When I said it was my wife, he asked if she was home now and wanted my phone number. I called security.
• She threw-up on my desk, and immediately started asking questions about the job, like nothing had happened.
• Pointing to a black case he carried into my office, he said that If he was not hired, the bomb would go off. Disbelieving, I began to state why he would never be hired and that I was going to call the police. He then reached down to the case, flipped a switch and ran. No one was injured, but I did need to get a new desk. (purported to have appeared in The Wall Street Journal 1989)

dark knight philosophy

do not click the link unless you want some partial spoilers for the movie (particularly within the comments after the article)!

i thought this blog entry was an interesting discourse on one of the primary moral dilemma/"social experiements" the joker invented in the dark knight movie.

and if you have not yet seen the movie. Run, do not walk, to the theater and check it out. it's waaaay to hot to do anything else right now, and this is probably the best comic book/super hero movie that's been made. if nothing else, go to get completely and utterly creeped out and amazed by heath ledger's performance. absolutely mindblowing.

oh and enjoy the chicago scenery - we sure did!

committed

i finally did it. i worked up the nerve, checked the box, signed my form, and faxed it over to kellogg to let them know i'll be attending in the fall. i'm a little (a lot) nervous, but am pretty excited (also a lot), and feel better now that i've gone through with actually sending the decision off.

i found out today that i got into depaul as well, which is great, but i just can't pass up the opportunity to go to kellogg. both are good schools, but i've got a number of reasons that i'm going the direction that i am. i'm going to get a great education and get to meet and work with great people.

it'll be a tough 2.5-ish years, but i'm sure it will be totally worth it in the end. i'll try to keep up the posting even though i'll be super busy!

wordle

try it. i did it on my tri blog as well. (click for bigger image.)

what a weekend

heath and i were super busy last weekend.

friday night, we headed up toward ravinia to see john hiatt. my friend lives near there, so we were able to park in her driveway. as we chatted a bit, it started pouring. she offered to let us in for a bit, to wait out the rain (outdoor concert and all), where her daughter offered us a lovely tour of their house. the rain did not want to quit, so we got invited for dinner - homemade risotto and margaritas. so delicious! after dinner, it cleared up a bit, so we wandered over to the show. it was damp and drizzled a bit more, but it was a lot of fun and john hiatt is SO good live! heath even bought me a cute little ravinia teddy bear.

saturday we woke up to rain so we pretty much did rainy day stuff - cleaning, organizing, lounging. once it cleared up a bit, we headed over to heath's friend's house to pick them up for our kayaking adventure. no rain, but we did get plenty wet under the big hose across the river. the fireworks were cool, but it was really tiring (6ish miles!), especially since none of us had ever kayaked before! we stayed at their house for a bit afterwards and got some pizza - even dominoes tasted good - that's how hungry we were. then it started to really pour and we took off.

we slept in sunday since we didn't get home until about 2am. that messes up your day. then we wandered down to watch the evanston northwestern healthcare grand prix of cycling. really. really. cool. it's a criterium, which is a very exciting, technical type of race to watch. those people have to be concentrating like mad the WHOLE time. we, unfortunately, saw a number of crashes. the worst were the two people (a girl during the women's cat 3 & 4 race, and a guy during the men's pro's) that had to be taken out in ambulances. they were both conscious but their heads were bleeding. yikes. the most dramatic crash was at the finishing sprint of the men's cat 3 race. some guys toward the front crashed somehow about 20 feet from the finish line. because of the speed and the tight pack, like 12 guys went down. bike parts and water bottles were flying everywhere. one guy stood up after crashing and got hit by another cyclist. nobody was too seriously hurt, but it was insane to see that crazy of a crash that close up - we were standing on the side right by the finish line so i saw the whole thing. a few trashed bikes, too. *weep*

the race is a pretty big deal and the guy that won the men's pros is a two time olympic champion. the announcer was great, but wasn't who i thought he was (confused myself with the whole belgian thing... i'll need to go see breaking away now). the guy that won the "sprint" jersey, was crazy good - he was very exciting to watch because he would pull these moves off and leap out in front at the last second somehow -- totally mind blowing. going and watching races like that make me both scared to death to try and curious to see if i could do it. one of the scariest things was when we were standing at one corner of the course and heath was taking pics as the guys came around the turn. if any of those guys missed the turn, they would have come straight into us - it was pretty freaky. that was the corner that both the people that went to the hospital crashed on. we weren't standing there when they crashed, but tight turns at high speeds are scary scary stuff. these guys were going somewhere around 30 mph, getting up to 35 on the sprint straightaways. to put that in perspective, in my races, i'm usually about 18 mph. the girls averaged between 20 and 25. maybe someday i'll be that fast. well, if i decide to go train.

that was fast

i had my interview @ kellogg last week wednesday, which is when i turned in my application. i got a call from the admissions director this afternoon to let me know i was admitted! how great is that? i figured i was a pretty strong candidate, but you never know, particularly with a prestigious school like this. so, it was really uplifting to find out i did get in - and to find out so quickly! i only had to wait a week! it's a great school, historically in the top three in the country for part time mba programs. whoo hoo! i'm excited to get my offer packet in the mail in the next couple of days and begin the financial aid process so that i can move toward making the next round of decisions.

oh and...

when i do start grad school, i'm considering getting one of these bad boys:

it is an electronic clipboard thing. you insert a regular notepad and then turn it on. when you write with the special pen, it records electronically what you've written down, and then you can use a usb port to put it on your computer and edit it up. handy, no? stores something crazy like 144 pages of info.

it would be great for me - i'm terrible at taking notes on a laptop and this would allow me to draw pictures and everything then upload them to my computer to be saved. it appears to be quite easy to use and captures the notes well. the portfolio for it would be cool, too. i think the use i would get out of it for $180 for the set would be well worth it.

edit: totally forgot the link: DigiMemo

update

yep, it's been a while since i posted. been super busy again, but doing well overall. looks like my last post was from the beginning of june. since then, i've done a triathlon, a 5k, and am gearing up for my next race in just over a week.

i've also been super busy at work with a pretty cool project. heath and i have been in and out of town visiting family etc. we also took a week long trip to chippewa flowage in wisconsin to do some fishing and relaxing. it was something we both really needed and we had a lot of fun.

the annual girls' was last weekend, but it was a slight variation on the usual. pam and teri couldn't make it, so my mom, sister, and aunt ginger came down to chicago to spend the weekend. i met up with them for dinner friday night at the cheesecake factory and a little bit of shopping at old orchard mall. saturday we went down to millenium park and navy pier. we did the skyline boat tour and rode the big ferris wheel. grabbed some lunch and did a little souvenir shopping before heading back north. saturday night was capped off with an awesome concert at ravinia - lyle lovett. now, before you think that's weird, you gotta give his music a chance. we had some wine and snacks and hung out on the lawn for the whole 3 hrs. lots of fun. sunday we hit trader joe's and then they got on the road. that afternoon, heath and i hopped over to the movies to see wall-e. super cute, highly recommended.

i'm in the midst of waiting to hear back from the two mba programs to which i applied. i had an interview with one school last week and had the opportunity to observe a class there last night. the commute wasn't bad and the students were very nice. the class was interesting and overall it was a good experience. i feel like i'm a fairly competitive applicant, so i'm hoping i get accepted to both schools so that i have some options to select from. i am, however, wondering if i didn't do myself a disservice by failing to look into the other "big" school in the area... i think it is no big deal, as either of the schools i have applied to would provide a great education and experience. there must be a good reason (subconscious?) that i didn't pursue that third one, so i'm not going to worry about it. i'll keep everybody posted regarding whether i get in and what decision i make.

i'm also taking a swim clinic that meets for an hour for 6 weeks on monday nights. the first session was last monday and i think that i'll gain a lot from the instruction. at the very least, it will guarantee that i'm in the pool for an hour every monday!

tonight heath and i are going to north avenue beach to play some beach volleyball. one of heath's friends needed somebody to fill in this week, so he asked us. (well, technically, he asked heath, but said i was invited, too). i'm excited because it's been so long since i've played.

tomorrow night, we're going back to ravinia for john hiatt. should be really fun. hopefully it isn't too hot and sticky. then saturday, i think we are going on some kayak thing where we kayak down the chicago river out to navy pier to watch the fireworks and then kayak back. it's about 6 miles, so hopefully we're up for it! sounds really cool, though! sunday morning, i hope i'm not too tired to get up and watch the criterium (bike race) that is being held in evanston. they're pretty fun to watch. we can walk down and probably sit outside and eat somewhere to watch it!

overall, super super busy, but having a lot of fun.