Funny in retrospect

Some interviews are just an outand-out disaster, but you do have to laugh – if only when it’s all over.

“I once had to endure a three-hour interview which took place in a room with no windows and 20 other people. We were asked to climb over one another, talk at length about our fellow interviewees, sing a song in front of the entire group and build a tower using only straws and masking tape.” – Ella, 31

“When I was 17, I went for an interview as a hospital cleaner. It was a confusing place, so I went to the first reception desk I could find. I was told to wait for ages. Then, bizarrely, I was given a kidney dish and asked to go and pee in it. I was so nervous about the interview that I couldn’t pee. I came out and asked when I might be seen for my interview. The reception lady and various nurses convulsed with laughter. Wrong department.” – Fiona, 33

“I was handed a feather during an interview for a job at a museum and asked to give a three-minute presentation about it. I started waffling on about how the feather probably came from a dodo and made up this whole history of the dodo. I got the job, though, so who knows what the other candidates did.” – Emily, 28

“I was asked, ‘What’s the biggest animal you could beat in a fight, and why?’ Under pressure, I said a dolphin, ‘So I could make friends with it and then put my thumb in the blowhole.’ I have no idea why. I was desperate.” – Holly, 29

“I was asked what I would say to an alien if it landed on Earth. I got flustered and said in an alien voice, ‘Zarg.’ They didn’t find it funny.” – Nancy, 28

“At the end of one interview, I got my foot tangled in the power cable of the interviewer’s expensive designer lamp and sent it crashing to the floor, where part of it broke off. In another, I spent an hour-long interview seated with my legs crossed. As the interview finished, I started to stand up, only to discover that one of my legs had gone completely dead. I started to fall over, grabbed the desk and started talking nonsense to my future boss until the feeling came back.” – Andrea, 35

“When I was 16, I applied for a holiday job at a supermarket. The greasy assistant manager said, ‘Girls are meant to be good at multitasking. Which means doing more than one thing at once. Can you give me an example of multitasking?’ I opened my mouth to answer and promptly sneezed and farted very loudly at the same time. I didn’t get the job. I suspect he thought my ‘multifarting’ was deliberate.” – Janie, 32

“I walked into a cupboard at the end of the interview, thinking it was the way out. I even shut the door behind me before I realised.” – Susan, 28