Editor’s note: This article was first published in October 2013; the description of Baines’s current position as vice-president of a technology company reflects that time.
A few weeks ago I published my 3 most surreal job interviews (lived through first-hand). In a recent Quora thread, users were asked what the strangest, toughest or most surreal job interviews they had ever taken part in were. All kinds of anecdotes came up, but the winner probably won’t leave you indifferent.
In the middle of the interview, the CEO’s alarm went off at exactly 8 p.m. To Rupert’s surprise, the CEO told him: “That alarm means you’ve missed your flight.”
Rupert Baines, currently vice-president of a technology company, is the hero of this story. He prefers to leave the company’s name out of it because of possible libel or defamation suits, although he says anyone can guess which company it is, as he gives a few clues.
Rupert explains that he travelled from Boston to California for an interview with one of the biggest technology companies, which at the time was getting ready to go public.
He was asked to come to the offices in the middle of the afternoon, where, without having eaten and without any explanation, he sat outside the CEO’s door for hours. The company knew that Rupert had to catch his flight home at 8 p.m. The CEO called him into the office shortly before that time.
Rupert is aware that this approach is very common in many companies that try to make it very clear “who’s in charge here” and who holds the power. He didn’t find it at all funny, since the CEO had scheduled things around the departure time of his flight and kept him waiting on purpose so that he would miss it.
Even so, the company covered the flight, the hotel, dinner and so on, and in the end they gave him the job: a dream salary and stock options in a pre-IPO company. But… Rupert turned the job down.
He says he refused to work for the company because of how he was treated in the interview, because of that needless show of power.
The curious thing is that, according to Rupert, he then received an email from the company’s CEO with the following message:
“I keep a list of the 10 stupidest people in America. Congratulations, you are now on that list. IDIOT.”
These days many people ask him whether he regrets turning that job down. Rupert says not at all: although the pay and conditions were excellent, he is much happier now. He married the girl he was dating in Boston, and in his current job, even though he earns less, nobody plays power games.
Further reading
- 6 things at work that motivate no one
- Branson: don’t hire a CV, hire a personality
- 13 jobs you’ll have a hard time explaining to your parents
- Words you should delete from your vocabulary
Featured image: Alan Myles NYC, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
