CHAPTER 2-16-17: 30 PRACTICE QUESTIONS TO GET YOU IN THE RIGHT MINDSET FOR ANY JOB INTERVIEW

What follows are the thirty most effective practice interview questions ever put to paper.   If you spend at least two hours a day reading over these questions and practicing your answers in front of a picture of Julie Andrews, you are all but guaranteed* to ace your job interviews like I always do.




1. Tell me about a time in which someone working with you needed you to hold their hair while they vomited.

What, if anything did you learn from this experience?


2.  Suppose that you are a basket of tepid, fried clam strips.


3.  Tell me about an experience you have had in which you had to hide unexpected arousal from a politician, member of the clergy or former children's game show host while on the clock.

What did you take away from this experience?


4.   How would you go about explaining a Jackson Pollack painting to a blind person while high as balls on mix of bath salts and peyote?

Would you make noises?  If so, please perform them now.

Now perform them as Disney's Goofy character.


5.  Suppose your supervisor hands you a Leggs pantyhose egg, a straight razor, plastic sheets, and a chloroform soaked rag, points at Loraine, the office gossip, and says "You know what you must do".  What do you do with the pantyhose?


6.  Tell me about a time in which you had to determine which of your co-workers was a grody hosebeast.


7.  Suppose legendary Irish author and artist Christy Brown (of My Left Foot fame) challenged you to leg wrestling match.  Would you humor him, and if so, would you go all out, or would you go easy on him?

If you chose to go easy on him, would you be comfortable telling him that you handicapped the match?


8.  Would you be willing to move to the Deep South, remove several teeth and gain seventy pounds?


9.  Envision a world without consonants.   Please, in the English Language of this hypothetical world, explain what a pangolin is to me.

10.  Have you ever had to determine which of your co-workers will be stoned to death?

Was it the one you deemed a grody hosebeast?


11.  Suppose you found out that Christopher, one of your co-workers, was Philadelphia's notorious Swiss Cheese Pervert.  Now, suppose that your elderly, naive, overly-sensitive, and deaf supervisor, Jill, chose to pass you over for a promotion in favor of Christopher.  Would you tell Jill about Chris's past behavior? 

What, specifically, would you tell Jill?

Now, please repeat that to me while doing an impression of Mister Rogers.


12.   Can you kick yourself in the genitals?

That was a demand, not a question.

How did that make you feel?

13.   Using only 1930s gangster slang, please explain to me what software packages you may be familiar with.


14.   Tell me about a time in which your parents were horribly disappointed in you, not because you had failed at one particular task, but because your entire life up to that moment had been a long, depressing string of mediocrity and awkwardness.


15.   Have you ever been in a situation in which you suspected that one of your supervisors was regularly taking part in three-way sex acts with your recently-divorced father and his new, significantly younger girlfriend, Tippi?  I KNOW my supervisor is regularly taking part in three-way sex acts with my recently-divorced father and his new, significantly younger girlfriend, Tippi.   Please tell me how you would go about confronting Tippi and telling her that she is not welcome at Thanksgiving this year.

16. Please explain to me what you envision a typical work day is like, speaking only in Bad Brains lyrics.

17.  Suppose that Diane, one of your co-workers, begins removing her press-on nails at the cafeteria table.  More alarmingly, by the time she leaves, there are eleven press-on nails left on the table.   How would you go about confronting Diane, and would you even bother mentioning the elevnth nail?

18.  Tell me about a time in which you had to explain to a customer that they were actually a mop with googly eyes attached to it.

19.  Are you still supposing that you are a basket of tepid, fried clam strips?

20.  Can you follow complex instructions after huffing flypaper glue?

21.  Randal, your cubicle mate, insists on eating an entire rotisserie chicken with his bare hands between calls.  Does that make him more or less repugnant than Diane from question 17. 

If you answered that Randal is more repugnant than Diane, would you allow Diane to rub Preparation H on your tummy while singing One Week by Barenaked Ladies to you?

22.   Tell me about a time when you had to make a split second decision, and it ended with a co-worker having an abortion.

23.   What words can you spell on a calculator?

24.   Tell me about a time when a grown man shat himself in front of you at the self-checkout lane at the grocery store.

Would you be comfortable being that man?

25.   If your co-worker Jeff had really good abs, but a fucked up pair of saggy man boobs, would you consider letting him fart on your forehead twice a day if it meant that we would provide you with a dental plan?

26.   While pinching the tip of your tongue between your right thumb and index finger, please describe how talking to someone with a cleft lip and no eyelids makes you feel.

27.  Our company firmly believes in being a non-judgemental environment for people who have had their lower jaws removed in order to better perform mock sex acts on mannequins during board meetings.  How would you go about explaining this policy to a group of tween Fundamentalist Christian day camp counselors?

28.  Our company is actually extremely judgemental of people who have their lower jaws removed in order to better perform mock sex acts on mannequins during board meetings.  Suppose that you found out that both Jeff and Diane were engaging in this activity, and that Jeff was also your supervisor.  Would you consider bypassing Jeff in the chain of command in order to report this activity, knowing that it was equally probable that doing so will either result in your immediate termination or a promotion?

29.   After undergoing massive restructuring and re-branding, our company has decided to keep you at your current pay grade with full health care for you and your family because one of your children is sick with a horrible disease that causes their body to slowly and agonizingly reject their skeleton.  The only catch is that you are now required to cold-call random people, trying to sell them a brand of lavender scented litter and pie tins for people with a crippling fear of water to use in lieu of the toilet.  Please explain to me how you go about pitching the people litter and pie tins to someone who is deperate for any human interaction after being lost at sea for a year.


30.  Suppose that the person who last sat in the chair you are currently sitting in had a huge, disgusting, prolapsed anus hanging out of the back of their pants.  They were also incredibly qualified for the job and were planning on using their entire annual salary for the first seven years to fund research that would be able to eliminate the possibility of anyone ever developing spina bifida again.  We, however, have decided to hire you because of the huge, disgusting, prolapsed anus hanging out of the back of their pants.  Please come up with a compelling argument to convince me to hire the person with the prolapsed anus without mentioning the spina bifida research, as that would indicate that you were aware of what their salary is.


*the phrase "all but guaranteed" does not actually guarantee anything.   I do, however, think these are kinds of valid, if earthy, practice questions for job interviews.