In which our guest blogger deals with a heinous CEO

So, while I've been sitting here, waiting on pins and needles (or is it "sitting" on pins and needles? Or just "on" pins and needles? Hmmm...clearly, these are the kinds of pressing questions that occupy my mind) for a job offer that, unfortunately, seems increasingly unlikely to come, it occured to me that I had a bunch of terrible interview stories from my friends just sitting in my email inbox, yet to be shared with the world.

"Oooh HOORAY!" I had said when they first emailed them to me. "Excellent! I'll post these PRONTO."

And that was, oh, two months ago.

Oops.

So. Without further adieu, please welcome today's guest blogger, "Natalie."

This interview comes from my early working days. As a young college graduate with good grades and a B.A., I was perhaps naively optimistic about the interview process. I moved to D.C., took a temp job with a non-profit and began my job search. One of those early interviews was with a small, 50-person company in northern Virginia that specialized in event management. My degree was in English, so no direct career path presented itself, and I thought event planning/management/execution would be an interesting place to begin.

I arrived at 9:00 AM for what I thought would be a standard first-round interview. First, I met with the HR Manager. She was very nice, very friendly, and very positive about my resume. By the end, she was telling me about the general work hours, the monthly happy hours, etc. I took this as a good sign.

Then she asked me if I’d be interested in meeting with a few other members of their team. Obviously I said “yes.”

The next person I met with was in the media-generation department. He asked me if I had an experience with PhotoShop and I admitted that aside from some minor exploration in my student newspaper days, I hadn’t. But, I was pretty seriously into Art back in high school and when he asked me if I’d be interested in learning PhotoShop, I practically salivated at the chance. Paid to play with a several-hundred dollar picture program? I was so there!

Next I met with a woman who was involved with direct planning. I should mention that by this time, it’s 11:30 AM and I’d been interviewing for 2.5 hours. But, everything seemed to be going well.

My three interviewers consulted – I could see them, nudging each other and whispering while I waited in the next room – and then they asked me if I’d have time to meet with their CEO. Their CEO, they said, would really like to meet me.

By this point it was after noon and I was hungry because I (to this day) prefer to eat at something like 11:00 AM but again, what could I say but “yes.”

[Note from [K]: As someone who has eaten many meals with "Natalie," I can assure you that this early lunchtime eating thing is very true. Also, "Natalie" is the only person with whom I can go to a restaurant, order sides of mac'n'cheese and mashed potatoes, and legitmately call it "dinner," because she orders the same thing. Anyway.]

Besides, at the time I was thinking that meeting the CEO was most definitely a good sign and, with any luck, I’d have an offer by the end of the day.

If I only knew.

One thing I should mention - in all of the abovementioned questions I was asked one question again and again. Everyone wanted to know if my current boss – my temp job boss – was a micromanager. They asked the question in different ways, and each time I wrote it off. I thought I knew what they were really asking: Are you capable of independent work? Are you trustworthy? Do you have initiative? How’s your work ethic?

So I answered enthusiastically again and again that even though my temp job was temporary and my boss liked me to check in, I was given assignments and expected to carry them out independently . And I threw in examples from my summer internships, my college activities. I thought I was nailing it.

Little did I know what they were really asking: how will you handle a psychotic micromanager?

Not well, as it turns out. But moving along.

I was ushered into the CEO’s office. He was a youngish man, maybe 40, and a UVA alum, which I figured gave me an instant “in.” It didn’t.

For one long moment he looked at my resume, then at me. “Law school,” he said.

Law school?

“Your resume. It has law school written all over it.”

I wasn’t quite sure how to respond to this. I wasn’t actually considering law school, but maybe if my resume was screaming “J.D. J.D.,” I should reconsider?

Then he said, “If I hire you, I’m going to have you sign a 2-year commitment with me. How do you feel about that?”

His tone added a so-there kind of feel. By this point I was sputtering…“Well…I guess…?”

Then he launched into a line by line examination – read: criticism – of my resume and everything that was wrong with. Which was apparently everything. He grills me on my temp job, pointing out how pathetic it is that I don’t have health benefits and what am I doing for long-term savings and I was thinking to myself "dude, this is why I’m interviewing for a real job, duh," but he was basically calling me an idiot to my face and I had ZERO experience with that.

And then he told me how he “takes a personal interest in the day-to-day routines of his employees,” and I began to picture my day: arriving at 8:30, check in with the boss; work work work, boss over my shoulder; lunch break, boss not pleased; bathroom break, ask boss permission first.

It was not a pretty picture.

By the end of my interview it was nearly 1:00 PM and he’d Xed out the majority of my resume, written negative comments all over it, drawn me a chart on the back diagramming his imagined version of the state of my finances, and I was doing my best to hold back tears. Then he told me he was “just trying to help out another Wahoo,” and he “hoped I’d take this as a lesson.”

Of course, now I know it is completely inappropriate for an interviewer – even a CEO – to treat a perspective hiree in such a manner, but at the time I was too young and too shell-shocked to tell him what I really thought of him. Instead, I left in a rush, barely speaking to the friendly HR manager and not looking anyone in the eye. And even though I still believe that everyone else in that office really liked me, that I could’ve been an asset to their team, I can’t say I’m sorry I didn’t get the job.

But, for the record, I never went to law school either.