Supermarket Manager Calls 20-Year-Old Employee Demanding He Show Up for His Shift, Except He Never Worked There Having Declined an Earlier Job Offer There After a Chaotic Interview—I Don’t Think I Want That Minimum Wage Paycheck

Job interviews are often thought of as being something where the interviewing employer has all the pull, but interviews are actually a two-way street—the candidate is trying to decide if they want to work there just as much as the interviewer is trying to decide if they are the right person for the job. It's important that job seekers remember this key detail and, if anything, this will help them from coming across as too desperate. 

Especially if, as the employer, the job you're offering is minimum wage, you're not presenting a whole lot of bargaining chips. The simple nature of these openings and the fact that the job is not compensating well is usually enough to mean that they will have to settle at some level for someone who isn't the perfect candidate. 

The interview is a game of cloak and dagger, where every move, every statement is amplified tenfold. Why was that specific thing worth mentioning or not mentioning? 

If the candidate fails to answer a question or recognize a question designed to smoke out those who are exaggerating their experience, the interviewer is going to assume that the reality is actually much, much worse. And if the candidate mentions something negative about themselves, the assumption is going to be that this is only scratching the surface.

Similarly, if an interviewer isn't able to keep the lid on the company's worst-kept secrets for a simple interview, and the candidate catches glimpses of the toxic environment and chaos that would be the reality of working there, well, it's fair to assume that this, too, is only the tip of a much more sinister iceberg of bad company culture and employment relationships. 

Anyone who has sat an interview for a minimum wage job in a bleak, liminal space that hasn't been touched since at least the 80s knows how these interview experiences go. As you anxiously wait in the waiting room like a kid outside the principals office, there's a certain smell of dust embedded in aging carpet squares that probably are 40 years overdue for replacement, perhaps even a subtle cling of old acrid smoke that has been lingering for that same number of years, from back when it was legal to smoke publicly indoors, and any attempts made afterward to remove the smell only removed the sharpness of it but not that characteristic dull nostril-filling smell of old smoke.  

Grey tiled ceilings like you used to throw pencils into in school overhead, further driving that unsettled feeling that you're about to be reprimanded for something.

And then when you get into the interview room, the interviewer is frantic, visibly stressed themselves, and doesn't really seem to be paying attention to your answers. None of this helped by the constant interruptions of other staff barging in asking questions or just generally not reading the room.

These crossed boundaries, signs of disorganization and a lack of planning, possibly hint at larger signs of cultural issues and toxicity. Where either team is understaffed and overworked or at the constant end of a pointed finger in a toxic culture where blame and a lack of respect reign supreme.

These are the types of interviews where you walk away wondering just whether you actually just experienced something real or momentarily slipped into a parallel dimension while time stood still in the outside world. 

That's what this candidate experienced, and it prompted him to walk away from the job offer, reading the writing on the wall and deciding to try his luck elsewhere.

The level of disorganization wasn't fully revealed, though, until sometime later when he received a call from another manager demanding to know where he was and whether he was going to show up for his shift. 

He probably then uttered that legendary phrase to her… “I don't work here, lady.”