So I thought this group would find this story amusing and horrifying. Let me start by saying this happened back in late 2017 and it's going to be a long one, but I've held it in for 5 years and have to get it out. Hope this is alIowed here. I was desperate for a job at the time and applied for an office admin position at this company. Before this I went to school for and was trying to break into IT (had just left my first job in that field due to crippling anxiety and daily panic attacks that continued even after I left… Thanks unnamed shitty cable company). Being desperate and seeing this job advertising a salary of $45k (which was more than I had made anywhere else prior to this), I applied on a whim.
I got the call for the interview and was met first by their male secretary (this is relevant later and I am also a dude). He told me that before even seeing the owner for the interview that I would have to take an instant drug test on the spot. OK, very weird, but I don't do drugs and like I said before I was desperate and already dealing with daily anxiety/panic attacks (which I blame for my going along with everything else I'm about to share as well) so I went along with it.
To no surprise I passed the drug test and was allowed to go in to the interview with the owner. He started off by explaining the drug test is because he's had so much trouble with employees doing drugs in the past. He then begins to interrogate me and ask me if I ever do drugs (wasn't the test enough?) I say no and he keeps pressing; asking me if I've ever done every drug he can think of. “Not even a little reefer” he asked while miming smoking a joint. Nope.
Finally moving on he began telling me that the job pays so well for what it is because he can't keep anyone in the position. He then says that he knows this is typically a “women's job”, but he doesn't like to hire women because he thinks they get grossed out by what the company deals with thus effecting their job performance (they collect and recycle old grease and oil from restaurants). He actually sarcastically said “women” followed by an annoyed groan while he rolled his eyes. This was his explanation for the male secretary and I'm guessing for the fact that I didn't see a single woman working around the building elsewhere as well. I should note at this point I've definitely decided there's no way I accept this job if it's offered to me. This guy has proven to be an untrusting paranoid misogynistic dick head in the first 15 minutes, but I think my anxiety made me feel trapped. Also to add to the unprofessionalism he regularly swore during the entirety of my interrogation.
Next came the interrogation of my resume. He asked why it seemed like I had drifted around the last few years with no real purpose in my career. I attempted to explain my work history the best I could. He then called me out on my education. I made the unfortunate mistake of going to an online for profit school in the late 2000's. Biggest mistake of my life no doubt. He told me that he heard my school lost their accredited status and I shouldn't have my degree on my resume anymore. They had not and even with all of the crack downs with those schools going on today they haven't. I got a little snarky knowing none of this mattered to me now and told him I wish they had so my student loans would be forgiven (side note- 5 years later and they finally are, thanks borrower defense). He insisted he was right and proceeded to call his wife who he said was a lawyer to find out for sure. She didn't pick up. He left her a voice mail. A couple minutes later she calls him back and he puts her on speaker. I'm assuming he was telling the truth about her being a lawyer because she started out by telling him he was wrong and “DO NOT TELL YOUR INTERVIEWEE THAT.”. She did not know she was on speaker.
The next thing he tried calling me out on with my resume and application I filled out on indeed was a section on the application that asked how many years experience do you have with data entry/filing. I worked a data entry job for 2 years so that's what I put. He was combing through my resume and wanted to know why I put that because he saw no filing experience anywhere. He wanted to know how I would ever be able to handle filing for this job. I explained that the reason I said 2 years was because it was presented as “data entry/filing” as one question and not split up. He gets up and tells me to follow him.
We go back up front to the secretary who apparently posted the job in the first place. The owner then asked him to pull up the original job posting. There it was just like I said. “Data entry/filing” as one question. He then spent a few minutes yelling at the secretary for this horrendous mistake. We then go back to his conference room to continue the interrogation.
Next on the list was my data entry skills. He wanted to know what my speed and accuracy percentage was. I told him that at my previous job they never gave reports like that, but if I were to guess it would be 100% accuracy with a speed of around 60 to 70 words per minute. He of course did not believe me and said he never heard of anyone ever having 100% accuracy. I was pretty confident that I was that accurate. In 2 years I never heard any complaints at my data entry job about mistakes and I worked for an auditing company so even one little mistake could have been huge. He got his laptop out and started googling things. He found an online data entry test that measured speed and accuracy. I was to take it immediately. I took it and ended up with an accuracy rating of… 100%. I don't remember what wpm score was, but it was good as well. I could tell by the owner's silence that he was running out of things to interrogate me with.
The last thing I remember specifically was him having me leave the conference room again after asking me if I had my own car and if it was parked there (yes and yes). We went outside and he then proceeded to inspect the inside of my car. He had me pop my trunk and looked in there as well. We went back in again and he asked if I knew why he just did that. I figured by his weird obsession with drugs that he was either looking for them or trying to see how clean/organized I was by the state of my car (it was clean). I told him the latter as to not get him on another drugs rant. This had already gone on far too long and now I wanted out whether I knew how batshit crazy of a story this would make or not.
After 2 hours he finally told me that he had 1 other guy he was interviewing after me and that he would personally call me to let me know his decision later that day either way. I got the hell out of there and never heard from him again. I passed by the other interviewee on my way out (another male) and still kind of feel guilty to this day for not telling him to run away while he still can.
Anyway, this was the craziest interview I've ever been on and I just felt like I had to share it.
Tl;dr: I went on an interview where I was forced to take a drug test before talking to anyone and then was interrogated for 2 hours while the owner of the company tried to catch me in a non existant lie about drug use, my job experiences, skills, and education with a side of him yelling at and berating a current employee in front of me as well.