Gormless Systems Memo 073: The Lateness-Based Hiring Protocol

**GORMLESS SYSTEMS — OFFICE OF PEOPLE OPERATIONS**

**MEMORANDUM 073: THE LATENESS-BASED HIRING PROTOCOL**

To all Talent Acquisition, all interviewers, and the bus driver who interviewed last quarter without asking a single question:

1. **The arrival time is the interview.** From this quarter forward, the first five minutes of any interview shall be weighted at 40% of the final score. Punctuality, we have determined, is a perfect proxy for every other competency, which is why our engineering interviews still take seven rounds.

2. **Lateness is a feature, not a bug.** A candidate who arrives late has demonstrated, in real time, how they will behave under pressure. We do not penalize them. We promote them. The apology is the resume.

3. **The one-line screen.** Candidates shall be judged on a single, spontaneous statement of no more than ten words, delivered unprompted. History proves that the entire assessment of a human being can be completed in the time it takes to apologise for traffic.

4. **No second questions.** A candidate who answers one question correctly has answered all questions correctly. This eliminates 90% of interview time, which can be redirected toward more productive work, such as scheduling the next seven rounds.

5. **Reciprocity.** Any interviewer who objects shall be reminded that our own last interviewer was hired after arriving forty minutes late and saying, and we quote: 'Sorry, mate.'

Approved, reluctantly, by the Office of People Operations, which notes that this protocol was written in full on the assumption that the candidate will accept the offer, because we cannot reschedule.

From the Satire Desk at goodbye, interview. All companies and people in this memo are fictional. Satire is always labelled and never names real companies — the true stories do that on their own. Spotted an error of fact in our non-fiction? Corrections.