She applied online to a dessert chain and heard back the next day: they weren’t actually hiring. The day after that, another email — an opening had just come up. Before any conversation, she was asked to answer fourteen questions “thoughtfully” by email and to send her résumé again, which she had already sent once.
The interview was on video. The interviewer joined from his house, in a wrinkled grey sleep shirt. They waited for the store manager to appear; when she did, she was muted, walking around the shop and working throughout the call.
Then the interview proper. She gave her usual account of herself — she had trained at pastry school — and he said, loudly, “that’s it?” He kept interjecting while she talked. At the end she asked whether he had any concerns about her ability to do the job. He raised the fact that she had only held seasonal roles, said he wanted someone long-term, and did not let her answer. He asked her to name the longest she had ever worked, in a tone she described as awful, and ended the call.
She did not understand, she wrote, why he was so surprised by a résumé he had seen twice before he agreed to interview her. She nearly cried, she added — and wondered whether she was being too sensitive.