Job hunting can be a nerve-wracking experience. After all, everyone wants to make a good first impression on the people deciding whether or not they will receive employment. However, not everyone seems to understand how to do that. From grossly unprofessional and inappropriate behavior to unabashed craziness, there are some job applicants who pretty much ensure that they will not be hired from the moment they submit their resumes. Here are 50 ridiculous stories about some of the worst job applications of all time.
1. An Inconvenient Truth
I was hiring for a convenience store in the United States, so we always scraped the bottom of the barrel and basically just hired anyone who showed up to the interview. In this particular region, the use of bad substances was so rampant that we demanded substance tests for all potential employees. That led to an interesting situation on one occasion…
I did the interview, gave the kid the urinalysis kit to bring to the clinic a block away, and then called the clinic to tell them they could expect him shortly to administer the pee test. He never showed up at the clinic. He also didn’t answer his phone when we tried to get in touch with him. He came back to the store a week later, proudly holding a cup of urine that he was there to turn in.
I asked him politely to please take the cup of pee out of my store and to never return. He looked very confused and was legitimately shocked. I then asked him why he didn't go directly to the clinic across the street after the interview like I had asked him to. He said that he wanted to wait til he could actually pass the pee test! God bless his simple heart.
2. Bottom of the Food Chain
A few years ago, I was interviewing for a chef de partie position. I received an application from a guy who said that he had been the head chef at what I’ll refer to as Restaurant A. The only problem was that I had been the head chef at Restaurant A myself. In fact, I was the one who had hired this guy as a commis chef just a couple of years prior. Commis chef is the most junior chef role we had.
3. This Sounds Like a Lot to Tackle
I once received a job application where the person’s resume was just a list of their high school football accomplishments. There was no other experience whatsoever written down. There was even a link to his highlight reel video. He also included a headshot of himself in his football pads and uniform. He was 24 years old at the time…
4. Speaking on His Behalf
I worked in a grocery store chain back in the day. I started out as a summer temp and eventually got hired out of high school and stayed on for a few years. As a general rule, the daytime shifts were coveted and mostly given to more experienced employees; while a summer temp and one experienced employee would typically work afternoons from 4 pm til about 11:30 pm.
One morning, my boss and I were stocking fruit when a mother came in asking for a summer job for her son. There was no sign of the son himself. My boss told her that he could swing by himself with a resume for him and he'd gladly take a look into it, as we were looking for summer temps. She simply replied that she was all the resume he needed.
She claimed she had many years of experience as an employer and could guarantee that he would do a good job for us. She kept going on and on along these lines. At this point, my boss is sort of just dumbfounded, but then she still keeps talking. She says that he cannot work evenings whatsoever, as he's far too busy with his friends. She also adds that he would be working 9 am to 5 pm at the very latest.
Apparently, he would also be unavailable for weekends and would take a three week summer holiday to go to Spain with the family. After this, she just asked my boss "So, should he just be here Monday morning then?" I've never seen a man struggle so much with giving a polite and professional "No thanks" as my boss did that day…
5. Don’t Count Your Chickens Before They Hatch
Whenever anyone gets an interview to work in my department, our whole team looks over their resume and can ask the applicant questions. There was a guy who applied for a mid-career position and had a few connections with some higher-ups in our company. So, they immediately scheduled an interview for him without actually reviewing his resume too closely.
When our team took a look at his resume, there were a bunch of red flags that we all immediately spotted. For example, he had titled the resume, "Why You Should Hire Me" and had a bunch of run-on sentences and misspelled words all over the place. Our team was confused and thought there must have been some kind of mistake.
Apparently, he thought he had the job guaranteed because of his connections, so he didn’t take the whole applying process seriously. He didn’t get the job.
6. That’s a Clown Question, Bro
I regularly review the applications of potential job candidates for the company that I work for. One time, I saw a very strange resume that someone had submitted. Under the education heading, it went straight from "Marine Officer Training School" to simply "Clown School". There was nothing else mentioned on the list.
7. To Catch a Thief
I work in a restaurant. I had a chef once apply with the following sentence included in his cover letter, "Good at helping my coworkers thieve whilst the restaurant is at its busiest". I'm sure he meant to say "thrive," but us chefs aren't to be trusted. Let’s just say leading people to think he would be swiping stuff on the job didn’t exactly help him get the position…
8. Fly Me to the Moon
I was the candidate in this particular story. Due to how the Indian college system works, I was forced to participate in a written test for a company that did aerospace related software. I was not interested in actually clearing the test. Ten years later, I still remember answering the question, "What is the attitude of a satellite?" with the following ridiculous statement..".
The satellite's attitude, i.e. mood, describes whether or not it wishes to remain in orbit. Satellites with a bad attitude are normally scrapped. Otherwise, they may decide to crash out of orbit or get into fights with other satellites". I continued along these lines for another six or seven lines til I had completed the paragraph. I wonder what the evaluators thought of me...
9. Creative Writing
A girl once applied for a job and I had the pleasure of reviewing her resume. On this resume, under skills, it just said "I’m really smart. Like, I’m much smarter than everyone else". No, this was not Donald Trump. This was a 25-year-old girl. This was also like ten years ago, so the girl is out there in the workforce somewhere in all likelihood.
Another guy applied for the same job. He was more than fifty years old, and his resume said, "See other side" at the bottom. I turned it over, expecting the worst—but I still didn't expect the words I read next: There was a handwritten message that said, "I committed a bad crime but it’s something I want to speak to you about in person". I didn’t call him in for an interview, either.
10. Rough Notes
I once had someone bring in a resume that was scrawled out on notebook paper ripped out from a spiral-bound notebook. They didn't even tear off the edge of the page so that it would look clean! This was for a high-level position, too. They wore a suit, carried a portfolio which I assume had a spiral notebook in it, and never offered so much as a single word as to why they jotted down a resume in the parking lot.
11. The Sound of Music
I am a classical musician in a very serious symphony orchestra. An applicant for a job with us as a paid tenor soloist in performing a series of Bach cantatas was asked: Please list sacred choral works, including cantatas, for which you have served as tenor soloist in the past. He responded: "None. But I can sing "On the Road Again" in the style of Willie Nelson".
12. You Are What You Eat
I had put a job posting out on the internet, and a potential candidate reached out to me to have a chat about the role. The role was a senior management position. I told him that my calendar was up to date and that he should book me for whatever time seemed mutually convenient. He booked me for one in the afternoon the following day.
For some reason, he put down his phone number in the "location" section. At 1:02 pm, he hadn’t shown up. So, I tried giving his number a call. He answered and told me that he was waiting in line for his food at a burger place. We began chatting over the phone. He then gets his food and says, "I'm going to crush this burger while we talk".
He was shocked when he didn't get a formal interview.
13. The Name of the Game
As crazy as this sounds, I've seen people submit a shocking amount of resumes and job applications with really awkward and unprofessional email addresses listed on them. Before being in a position where I review resumes on a regular basis, I never would have thought that so many people would be willing to provide an email address like "badgirl420" or "awesomedude" to a potential employer.
But, as it turns out, a lot of people are!
14. She’s in Denial
The worst job application that I have ever had to handle was the girl who just didn’t seem to understand that we were not going to hire her. I told her politely, because she was bad and we would never hire her anyway, that we didn’t have any work available for her. Despite that, she kept telling me when she could start and everything.
I just kept repeatedly having to say, "As I’ve already explained, I can’t hire you. There’s literally no work available for you here". For some inexplicable reason, this got me the reply, "Okay, so then I’ll call you on Monday morning to let you know what my schedule is like". I really don’t get it. You clearly speak English, why is this so confusing for you??
15. A Picture Is Worth a Thousand Words
I’m not an employer, but I work in my company’s human resources department. One time, a person sent us just their resume without any cover letter and without the rest of our standard application forms. To make matters even worse, it actually wasn’t really the resume itself. It was just a photo of the resume. And the photo was totally blurry. It was also partially folded.
I just looked at it and thought to myself, "You had one job!"
16. Putting Your Money Where His Mouth Is
While reviewing resumes and applications for a job opening at my company, there was one that stood out to me as being the most ridiculous thing I had ever seen. According to his application, the applicant had been convicted for a theft of under a $1,000. It also said he had one special skill: "Money handling". I will never forget this one for as long as I live!
17. All Work and No Play Makes Jack a Dull Boy
I was looking to hire a new chef for a pub here in the United Kingdom. One person applied and ticked all of the boxes saying they couldn't work weekends, evenings, or bank holidays. So maybe don't apply to work in a pub then? You know, a place that is only busy outside of normal working hours? Not the worst thing in the world, I know, but did they really think that they would even get an interview?
18. Everything Worked Out in the End
I worked in a company’s Human Resources department back in the 1970s. One applicant under the question regarding convictions wrote that he had recently served six years in prison for the murder of his wife's lover. He finished off the application by saying that he and his wife were now back together and happily married. As if that makes the whole thing less of a big deal…
19. Web of Lies
The craziest job application that I ever witnessed was this kid who tried to pass off other people’s work as his own and made up a fake degree that he didn’t actually have. He got caught. But not on the application. No, he got caught in the middle of the actual interview. The kid claimed to have a Master’s degree in the field and to have completed an internship.
During the interview, he repeatedly fumbled even the most basic questions about the field and, as I mentioned, showed us what was clearly someone else’s work as if it was his own. The reason I know that it was not his own work is because he actually at one point slipped up and said, "Oh, I’m sorry about the PowerPoint. My coworker made it".
My jaw literally dropped when I heard him say that. He was so bad that the other interviewer Slacked me while it was going on, asking if the kid even went to school at all. Extremely confused at how bad this whole thing had gone, I went to his university’s website out of curiosity to see what kind of education produces such a horrible job candidate.
Well, as it turns out, the school on his resume didn’t even offer the degree that he claimed to have had. Yep. That means he completely made up the degree, put it on his resume, and somehow thought that the hiring manager with more than ten years of experience in the field wouldn’t catch it. I gotta say though, that kid had some serious guts to even attempt something as ridiculous as that!
20. Hoping for a Casual Work Environment
In their cover letter, one job applicant once wrote: "I have a 2011 Toyota Corolla," and: "I keep things organized with STICKERS!!!" The caps and multiple exclamation marks were all included. Shortly after that one, we had a different girl apply for the job who completely ignored the instructions asking everyone to apply online.
She literally just showed up off the street in jeans and a baseball cap and asked if we were still hiring. When we said yes, she threw her arms up in the air like Vanna White on Wheel of Fortune and shouted, "Here I am!" My coworkers later told me that the look on my face was priceless when I heard her say that. Don’t you just wonder how some people make it through life?
21. O Come All Ye Faithful
I once reviewed a job application where the person had put down the name "Jesus Christ" as their only reference. Needless to say, they did not include a phone number or email address for us to reach out to. Sadly, we required every applicant to put down at least two references, so this probably fascinating person did not quite make the cut…
22. Keep Your Friends Close and Your Enemies Closer
One time, my brother was jokingly asked if he admires bank robbers during a job interview at a bank. I guess he wasn’t thinking too clearly in the moment, because for some inexplicable reason he said yes. He immediately realized how ridiculous that answer was and instantly regretted his response. Sadly, he did not get this job.
23. Let’s Make a Deal
One time, a kid who I was interviewing for a job put down at the end of his resume: "I was recently released from a juvenile detention center. Just to show you how bad I want this job, I will work the first shift for free". Unfortunately, it’s totally against the law to not pay someone for working. I felt really bad for the kid. He really tried his best. This was 13 years ago. I wonder where he is now.
24. Shredding the Interview
I once got a job application from someone who put down as one of their references a guy known simply as "Cheese". Now, I don’t judge people for having weird nicknames, but how can you submit an application referring to your reference as Cheese?? Not even a last name? It was pretty hard to take this candidate seriously after seeing that…
25. Practice What You Preach
One time, I received a cover letter from a job applicant that included the following sentence, word for word: "I am attention to details". Oh really? Well, you know what would have been a more convincing way of trying to make that point to us? Not completely missing the key detail that your sentence makes no sense! I mean, seriously!
26. Someone Forgot to Proofread...
I was a manager of a small restaurant back in my day. The owner valued my input, but I couldn't hire or fire anyone on my own without his permission and supervision. One time, I had a kid bring in his application, and I guess he was making jokes while typing it up and forgot to fix it before submitting. Under "expected pay," he wrote, "minimum junk". Despite this mistake, he was still hired. Unfortunately, he turned out not to be a good fit at all.
27. When Honesty Isn’t the Best Policy
I once helped my employer review intern applications through a third party company that helps place college students to find internships. This meant that everything on their applications was written generically for any job that they may have wanted, not tailored at all to our specific job. That might have made this next fact even crazier.
A letter of recommendation for one applicant came to us. It said the following, more or less word for word: "Billy is a lazy and unmotivated student. I would not place him in one of your top jobs. But if there is an unimportant internship that you can get him, it might be a good motivator for his future". We did not call Billy to offer the job…
28. Sister, Can You Spare a Position?
Not for a job, but back in college I was interviewing girls to join our sorority. On their way in, we'd hand them a pamphlet or flier with general information about the organization. This information included things like dues, our philanthropy, our mascot, etc. The idea was that they'd take it home with them and read it after. That is not what ended up happening in one girl’s case.
Instead, this girl immediately started looking at the pamphlet and quizzing me on it. She would put it up to her chest so that I couldn't see the answers, and then ask me what our flower was or what year our organization was originally founded. I didn't get a chance to ask her any questions, because she spent the entire time of our interview asking me about information on a flier that I myself had typed up.
This was something like twenty years ago, and I still have no idea what happened. Did she think that this was what the interview was for? Did she not want to join and just decided to have some fun with me? But if she didn't want to join, she could have just turned the invitation down on her end. Maybe she thought she was being funny?
When all was said and done, she did not get in. Soon after, she ended up joining another sorority. I wanted so badly to ask the people from that sorority whether she had done the same thing to them too. But unfortunately, I had no way of knowing who she would have talked to on their side. Either way, that interview was probably one of the strangest interactions I've ever had with another human being.
29. We’re Off to See the Wizard
We once received a resume at my office that was full of many hilarious and ridiculous sentences. I strongly regret not having saved it for future reference and amusement. Among the many hilarious lines it included was: "I know how to use my wizard brain to solve many problems". Now is there a single job in the world that wouldn’t want a candidate with that incredibly amazing skill?
30. A True Work of Art
I once had a fella call me up to inquire about an artist position that we had available. When he showed up for the interview, he just threw his portfolio on the desk and said, "My work speaks for itself". His portfolio was a three-ring scrapbook, to which he had haphazardly taped a bunch of blurry, black and white photos of a bunch of paintings.
Many of the photographed paintings were awful. Then there were a few good ones, which I immediately recognized as my own. This guy had literally taken pictures of my paintings that had been featured in magazines around that time and was trying to present them as his own work. I pointed this out to him and he immediately became upset.
At first, he tried to deny it. Then, he tried to backtrack by saying that they were in there as "inspiration". I pulled the pictures out of the "portfolio" and threw them into the trash. I followed that up with a brief and belittling statement about ethics, law, and the possibility of accidental injury should he continue such actions. I then happily showed him the door. Good times!
31. Calling All Cars
Entry-level call center positions have really high turnaround, so when posted there are usually several positions to fill for a training class. A guy once applied for a position at the place where I work, and he listed his female "supervisor" from his previous job as one of his references. He had apparently just moved to our town from the next town over.
After he had his interview with us, the "supervisor" who he had listed also happened to apply for the same job. We immediately recognized the name. On her resume, her position at the previous job was not listed as a supervisor. It was actually listed as the exact same position as the guy had himself had. They also had both listed the exact same address as one another. That when I finally realized what was happening.
Turns out she was actually his wife. On his resume, he had used her first name and maiden name. On hers, she used a hyphenated last name. They both had the exact same phone number and email address. It was all so blatantly obvious. To make matters even worse, I’m pretty sure that his second reference was really his father.
I even gave him the benefit of the doubt at first, not wanting to make assumptions. I actually called her for a reference just to see what she would say. She pretended to not have spoken to the guy in the two weeks since he had left his previous job. She also pretended to still work there, despite her having just submitted a resume to us stating that she was no longer working there.
How stupid do people out there think other people really are?! Like, just be honest! Yeah, that’s my man, we moved here together and both left the other place for such and such reason. What is the big deal? And like they really think it wouldn’t come out eventually that you are husband and wife if you both did get the job? Neither of them got the job in the end, and the wife didn’t even get an interview as a result of this fiasco.
32. Does Spelling Count?
The year was 1987. I was reading through a bunch of job applications for an office position at my company. We desperately needed a new receptionist who could do some extra office work for us. The Question: Please list all office equipment that you know how to operate. The Answer: Ze Rocks and Bic Clic. I believe what they were trying to say was Xerox and Bic Click, as in a type of pen.
33. There Are So Many Creative Ways to Be Unprofessional
Some years ago, I was interviewing a whole bunch of internal candidates for a job at our location. The job posting asked for a copy of your last review and for a letter of interest, basically a cover letter. We have computers and printers available for any employee to use, but one woman in her 40s, who was pretty intelligent overall, made a strange decision.
She decided for some reason to handwrite her letter of interest on a scrap piece of 5"x7" ripped paper. Umm, what in the world? Why would you do that? The kicker was that she wrote in the letter something along the lines of, "I bet nobody else took the time to write a personal handwritten letter". Gotta give her an A for effort at trying to spin it into a positive.
Around the same time, I was interviewing an external kid in his early 20s for an entry-level stocking job. I asked one of the typical stock questions: "Give me an example of a time when you had a disagreement with a coworker". He nonchalantly goes into a story about some trivial argument where he and another coworker ended up getting into a full-on fistfight outside of an A&W restaurant. I felt kind of bad that he thought that it was an okay story to tell at a job interview...
34. An Acquaintance in Need Is a Friend Indeed
Back when I was in high school, I worked part-time at a gas station as both a cashier and a backup cook. One of the local substance users and high school dropouts decided one day that he wanted to apply to work alongside me. I gave him a job application to fill out. He put me down as a reference even though I didn't really know him too well.
He filled the application out right then and there, right in front of me, and then walked out of the store. He spelled my name completely wrong, despite the fact that I was wearing a name tag right in front of him. He did not end up getting the job. Mostly because he had the F word casually tattooed across his knuckles…
35. Party in the USA
On one occasion, I had an interviewee for an entry-level office position going through the application process with me. At the end of my interview with them, I asked, "What question should I have asked you, but didn't?" Sometimes when I ask this, people tell me that I got them all. But other times this gives people a chance to talk about something they planned to but didn't come up.
Anyway, she responded with: "Do you like to party?" I'm not sure if she was going for some kind of substance euphemism or not, but it was definitely a weird answer and not at all an appropriate one for a job interview. I have no idea if she was trying to be funny or was being serious, but it just came across horribly. She did not receive a job offer from us.
36. All or Nothing with His Responses
During one job interview that I was conducting, things got interesting right off the bat. On the very first question that I asked him, the candidate started rambling on and on about an argument that he had with his mother that morning. It was something to do with how she thinks that he’s too quiet but he’s actually just deep in thought all the time.
He also added that he absolutely HATES it when anyone interrupts his thinking, because then he apparently has to start all over again. This bizarre rant went on for a full ten minutes as he got progressively more and more upset as he went along. He eventually ended his rant with a loud and angry slam of his hand on the table.
Ohh kaaay then, moving on. We ask him the second question, and he just sits there staring at the wall. The other interviewer and I exchange desperate glances at one another. After the longest minute I’ve ever experienced in my life, I offer that we can come back to that question later. He lets out a long and frustrated sigh, He then just glares at us and doesn’t say another word. He did not get the job…
37. He Had the Wrong Idea
A guy was once interviewing for a front end designer position where I work. He listed that he'd worked on more than 1,200 websites at his current workplace where he was an IT tech. He explained that he was currently trying to transition to design or development. Obviously, I had to know the specifics of what he did on those projects.
Turned out he was just counting all of the WordPress deployments that his coworkers had done the actual design work on. And I use the word "design" very loosely. I’m pretty sure they just reused existing templates with minimal custom work. All this guy really did was manage the plugin and theme updates. In fact, he played only a minor role in all of the projects that he had listed.
I already went into that interview pretty annoyed because my boss was ready to hire the guy based on a recommendation from a mutual friend alone. I remember asking him some basic design questions. For each one, he either couldn't answer or insisted that he'd learn once he started the job. Unfortunately, we didn't have any dedicated designers at that point.
Because of this, my boss was going to hire him as the lead designer. I told him I'm just a full stack developer doing all the design work because we didn't have anyone on staff for it, and we really needed to hire someone that knew a lot more than me when that's what they do. He looked so dejected I felt kinda bad for him.
I told my boss privately that this guy was just going to eat up all our time because he needed so much training. I also let him know that I simply didn't have the time for that. My boss had probably told him that the interview was just a formality, but I was so against it that he ended up not hiring him. Instead, he gave him six months to catch up on his education and promised to hire him then if there was progress made.
My boss had already moved to a different position before that happened.
38. Wake Up and Smell the Coffee
I'm not an employer, but I was frequently helping my bosses with many of their hiring decisions back when I worked for a small coffee shop in my area. I got one application where a woman said that she would be perfect for the job because she knew everything there was to know about coffee already, due to the fact that she had a Keurig at home.
That wasn't the only bad answer on this application. I don't actually remember the other red flags about her specifically, but that answer was the worst one to me. It would have been fine if she had just casually mentioned that she had a Keurig, even though I don't personally think that's good coffee. It was the "I already know everything" part that really got me.
39. Bringing Out the Animal in Him
As a head chef at a local restaurant, I once had a job candidate submit a resume to me for a grill cook position. This individual cited their pet ownership as an example of them being "good with animals," which they felt was a qualification for them to be hired to cook meat. Some people are just on another level of crazy…
40. Keeping It Short and Sweet
I used to work in the recruiting field, so I have seen tons and tons of resumes over the years. It's very tough when you don't really have any job experience, but I saw a resume on one occasion where the guy just had the following: his name, his phone number, education: none, work experience: picking up leaves for old people.
That was literally his whole resume. Four points, 12 pt font, covering just an inch and half of an entire sheet of paper.
41. A Family Man
This was 17 years ago, but when I was 21 I had a second, part-time, job delivering pizzas for Papa John’s. One day, I was waiting for some deliveries when the store manager walked out of his office with a job application and taped it to the wall. He then said, "Does anybody here think we should hire this guy?" Back then, in my state, a job application could ask if you were a convicted felon. A law has since passed making this prohibited, unless it is directly relevant for the job.
On this guy’s application, where it asked if you were a convicted felon, he answered yes. After that, it asks a follow-up question: "If answering yes, please explain". This guy wrote, "I slept with my cousin". He was not hired.
42. What Could Go Wrong?
Not sure if this counts, but it’s worth a mention. During a year off that I took from university, I once took a job driving home-shopping deliveries for a well-known supermarket. The interview process was one of those where there was a large group interviewing together and competing for a limited number of positions. I got to chatting with this one dude during the process.
He mentioned that beforehand he’d been driving a minibus for a program for disabled kids. I said, "Oh, you might know my dad then. He recently started doing that". He went "Oh no, see I had my minibus license revoked due to my convulsive epilepsy". I replied, "What the heck, man? And you’re applying to drive these vans full time?" He said, "Yeah, but they haven’t taken my regular driver’s licence away yet, so it’s all good until then".
He didn’t get the job. I did, though.
43. Aiming for the Top
In this case, it wasn’t really anything on the resume or application itself. It was what came after that made things very entertaining. We were hiring for a call center position in my department. This one man passed the phone interview, done by the CEO of the company, and was told to come in for a face to face interview with the managers of the department.
He shows up and answers a few questions before asking what job he was applying for at the company. I replied that it was for a call center position, and he immediately looked disappointed. He then began asking if there were any other positions open. There were not any others open at the time. I began to wrap up the interview and I asked him about his past experience.
He says that he has always worked in upper management. Then, he asks the wildest question I've ever heard: "Are you guys hiring a CEO position at the company?" Umm, no dude. You literally talked with our CEO during the phone interview. That position is very much filled. Thanks. I ended the interview after that part. It was one of the worst interviews that I have ever been through. He was unbelievably unprepared and applying for an entry-level position.
44. School’s Out for Summer
In the "memberships" section of the job application for an academic position, which is usually for listing your affiliations with professional organizations and relevant certifications, someone put down the name of the gym that they belonged to. As if that has any bearing on whether they were qualified for the job. This was not an entry-level job either, so they probably should have known what it meant!
45. Did You Document That?
Not on the application, but I interviewed a guy once for a job in our department. Our department is known for extensive documentation. Like, that’s the one thing that everyone knows about it. And when I asked him about what kinds of challenges or weaknesses he had, he immediately said, "I’m pretty bad at documentation". This would almost be like interviewing to be an accountant and saying you’re terrible at math.
46. Phoning It In
One day, this kid came into the booze store that I work at looking for a job. He was kind of a jerk and was demanding a job application, so I just gave him one to chill him out. He decided he’d fill it out at our counter, with our pen, and then proceeded to ask me what other stores were around in the area so that he could put them down as a previous job.
Umm, what? You want to lie on your application about working at another store to my face? Idiot. Once he left, I immediately threw the application into the garbage. Oh, and he stole our pen. But the plot thickens...About a week later, he comes back in, says he just got fired from another store in our shopping plaza, and asks me once again if we’d hire him.
I asked him why he got fired from the other store, and he said that it was because his boss was a jerk. Why was his boss a jerk? For refusing to let him play Candy Crush on his cell phone while he was working behind the counter. His boss fired him on the spot. It was his first day on the job. How freaking stupid can you be?
47. Better Late Than Never?
I run a weld shop. Generally speaking, I don't give a hoot about my employees’ past history, tattoos, or anything like that. As long as you're here on time every day and do a good job, you're golden as far as I’m concerned. I'll look past a lot on a resume. One morning, I check my emails and see a reply to a Craigslist job listing that I had posted about a month prior.
In the very first line of his cover letter, the applicant asks, "Do you guys test for substance use?" Okay, whatever. Most of my guys are on something. I reply back and tell him that no, it's not our company policy to give mandatory substance tests to all our employees. About an hour later, I get his resume. The dude had absolutely zero welding experience.
Now, this isn't necessarily a problem in and of itself. To be perfectly honest, some of my best guys have come in with no experience. But this particular resume, if you can even call it that, had only one job written on it. Taco Bell. After ignoring the resume and giving the guy a chance, he shows up about two days late for his interview.
The guy was very clearly intoxicated out of his mind. This dude was probably about 35 years old. He insisted on still being given an interview. I had to very kindly tell him to screw off. He started crying. Like full on anger-weeping right in front of me as if I had just attacked his mother. We had to literally drag the dude out of the office.
Eventually, he wiped away his tears, got on his bicycle, and screamed a mouthful of profanities at us as he pedaled away.
48. When History Repeats Itself
I was working at a retail store back in my high school days. One time, someone came into the store while I was on my shift and dropped off a paper application. In the section about criminal history they checked "yes" to the question of whether they had any prior convictions. In the space provided to state what the legal issues were, they simply wrote, "rong place rong time". We kept that application around for a while.
49. A Blast From the Past
I worked for a small company, and this resume we once received got passed around the office whenever one of us needed a laugh. Turns out that it was actually from someone who I had worked with at my previous company. He was claiming to have been the lead developer on a project that I had personally written from the ground up with one other person.
No, the one other person was not him. I told my boss that we should interview this person for entertainment value only, and I explained why. So we did—and it went even better than I ever imagined. I left the people with the gotcha questions to ask him, and he tried to awkwardly maneuver his way through each one of them. I was the last interviewer, and the look on his face when I walked through the door was priceless.
50. So Close, and Yet So Far Away
I was hiring for a retail position one time when I received this unbelievably good resume and cover letter. The person seemed extremely qualified, responsible, and professional. They also fit the position perfectly and checked every box that we were looking for. I was super excited to give them a call and set up a formal interview. I had very high hopes for them.
Then, I realized that they had forgotten to put any contact info down and I had no way to reach them…
Sources: Reddit,
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