Interviews

A few days ago, some interviewees for the District Manager position came to one of my stores. I have had this happen before. Basically, I walk them around the store, speak about my position, answer any questions they have, and then give my opinion on each one of them to my boss. Whether they listen to anything I have to say and hire the people I want is completely and totally out of my control. But, I digress. As we were driving from lunch to the store one of the potential DMs asked me if there were any really crazy stories from working at Aldi.

Are there any crazy stories from working in a grocery story and dealing with the general public on a daily basis???

If the giant letters repeating the question wasn't enough of an indicator, the answer is yes, there are tons of crazy stories from working at Aldi. I once had to clean poop up off the floor. Poop. Someone thought it was perfectly acceptable to leave human feces on the sales floor. I mean, I'm pretty sure it was from a baby, but I still feel like there is no excuse for walking away from poop on the floor.

But that's not the story I decided to tell him. I decided to tell him a story about interviewing, because inevidently, you're going to have a crazy interview. Inevidently, someone crazy is going to sneak through the selection process and you will have to waste a half an hour of your life interviewing them, but at least you might get a good story out of it.

This particular interview I chose to tell him about happened when I was working out in Buffalo. This particular interviewee was actually someone that my store manager had met in the store when the applicant filled out his application, walked the applicant around the store, and then decided that he would be a good candidate for Aldi and thus handed him over to me to interview. Since this particular applicant had already been screened by my store manager, I was expecting to get a fairly decent lad.

I bring the candidate into the breakroom where I have set up the room for the interview. On the first question I ask the candidate to just tell me a little about yourself. Hobbies? Interests? Anything that's not work related. At this point the candidate finds it would be completely appropriate to tell me about the bad crowd he was hanging out with when he lived in Florida and how he got in all kinds of legal trouble and was really into drugs and now he is in Buffalo living with a 45 year old hippie who smokes a lot of pot.

So, as you can imagine, I was completely impressed right off the bat and couldn't hire this guy soon enough.....(that's a joke).

The interview continues. With every question this candidate seems determined to show me all his worst qualities. 

Me: If I were to call the manager at your last employer, what do you think he would say was your greatest strength.
Him: My greatest strength.....hmmm. .....I'm not sure. I guess something about customer service...or...ummm....I don't know. What he would probably tell you though is....well, you see....when I was working there I didn't have a car. So I would have to walk all the way across that Walden Galaria Bridge....you know....the one that goes over the thruway. Well anyway, so I had had Mighty Taco the night before for dinner. And you know how Mighty Taco kind of sits a little funny in your stomach? Well after I walked all the way across that bridge the next morning I really was not feeling well........so I told my boss that I was sick and couldn't work and he was all up in my face saying that I can't just call off from a shift like that and I was supposed to be working right then and I needed to find someone to cover for me.....and I was all like...yeah man...that's fine. But like I gotta use your bathroom right now that's how sick I am....like really I gotta go to the bathroom now.... And well... I don't know if you've heard of it but I don't have like a cell phone service because I can't really afford that so I just have this thing where you only get text messages its through AT&T its like $10 a month because I figure I might as well get the thing thats the only way people communicate these days.....anyway...so I was like if I can just go home then I'll have my bathroom and I'll have my phone and I can call people to cover for me. You know because I just really needed my bathroom and my phone. That would be perfect. But anyways. So I went to the bathroom there and by the time I got out he had found someone to cover my shift....But yeah.....he would probably tell you that story because he was pretty hot that day.

Disclaimer: If you didn't laugh out loud during that story, then it is not because the story is not funny. It is merely because my writing is not good enough to portray the histeria of the situation.