The need for a preface shows that you should not finish that sentence. And the fact that the interviewer acknowledged they know it’s a “difficult question” …. TOTALLY inappropriate, whichever way to you see it. You taught me how far I’d be willing to go for someone. (which is harder for youo–internal, vs. imposed from the outside). I can imagine a situation where their boss insists that it’s an important question and must be asked. It’s too bad they didn’t die simultaneously, because then I would know for sure.” And then walk out. This. It was well over a year before we were initially “done” with it, and we are not done recovering yet, and this happened in 2004. For instance, in Manitoba there have been a recent rash of liquor store robberies and a number of workers have been assaulted, some quiet seriously. Or even: people with poor boundaries will speak and people with better boundaries won’t. This goes beyond. Copyright © 2007 - 2021 Ask A Manager. According to Ex-EMT (who is also Jenny from the Fish Fry Kidnapping, yes, things happen to her) the new mother heard them saying “It’s a girl” and “the placenta is coming out” and said “That’s a pretty name, Placenta, I should name her that.”, At which point the ambulance team that wasn’t dealing with baby and umbilical cord showed her the organ bit she’d just birthed along with her baby and said “No you SHOULD NOT.”. Directed by Doug Irvine, Kris Kristensen. @TOOGAM It's not a job interview, so I'm not really sure where you're going with that comment. How did I want to define myself? Cue ugly tears. Ideally, in the moment you could have said, “That’s such a deeply personal question, especially with the types of trauma people might have in their backgrounds! We had to go around in a circle and disclose something in front of everyone. 34.0k comments. You could discover that football really isn't your sport.. And that’s putting aside those who suffered harassment or bullying or people asking for their livers at work, or far worse!) That would be a fun two hours while I bring them up to speed, lol. Let’s ask them how much they’ve SUFFERED and let it come out that way!”. But, “worst thing that happened?” I’d really rather not discuss something like “potential active shooter in the building” (which isn’t the worst thing that’s happened) with a total stranger. This is a wildly inappropriate and out-of-line question to ask in a job interview. I was finally allowed to leave two hours after my regular time, when they admitted that the devs screwed up. But I think we make it quite clear that what we’re after is an understanding of their skills in responding to the unexpected, and I’ve had people give really great answers without the event in question having been anything dramatic or awful. I feel this—I stayed in an abusive marriage and also feel ashamed. If you have a pet always check your appliances before you turn them on. Off-topic: Shoutout for early CSI reference! Those memories can be pretty traumatic, even when they are not that big of a deal in the grand scheme of things. Pick your poison, as they say. His failure to do that is his own fault. I would love to be asked a question like that, because I’m really good at pulling together an awful traumatic coherent totally fictional event on the fly. But if they know that’s a thing that happens with enough frequency in their work, you would think that would be in their training and they would have some documentation for employees on what to do in that situation and what resources are available for you and the client. I really like that phrasing! Minimize the distractions - the fewer people in the room the better. It sounds to me as though these interviewers may be trying to get at something similar but mangling it horribly, and not really knowing in their own minds what they’re asking/looking for in the first place. “You seem very hung up on ‘new’ things. I’d have to be working for the CIA defusing bombs for that question to come close to being worth it. It was not supposed to be group therapy and we weren’t supposed to discuss our personal lives. I’m fine, but I imagine it could be pretty upsetting for someone with a more recent traumatic experience. Hundreds of people have been sharing their funniest and most embarrassing dating stories via #MyWorstDate as part of Jimmy Fallon's latest hashtag game, and some of them are so bad that all you can do is laugh. And if you’re talking about work situations, maybe you don’t want everyone to be thinking about your trauma when they stop by your cubicle to give you the latest teapot sales figures or design changes. Then, when they seem more comfortable, ask for them to tell you about their first experience with a substance, ask some follow-up questions about that and how they felt at the beginning, then ask them to talk about their descent and when they knew they'd reached bottom and how things were different at that point. I’ve had that type of question a couple of times. Even with so many people here pointing out the serious traumas they’ve experienced and how they seriously do not want to go through remembering those in the middle of a JOB INTERVIEW? She wasn’t expecting that level of falling apart, however. That interviewer is an objectively awful human being. Ooh, I spent six years at a place like this before I flamed out. I liquidated my 401k and didn’t even look for work for three months while I put myself back together. And my earliest memory was being molested by a babysitter. I’m currently teaching full-time but am interviewing for some part-time adjunct work I can do over the summer. As an adult, I spent two years working for a manipulative, abusive jerk and I’ve got a whole litany of stories I could tell about awful things she said and did. And if there are complicated issues trying to be explored – this question isn’t the best way to get there. …but I’m really really reaching to even come up with that, and I would have expected the interviewer to preface the question with an explanation of why they were asking. The actual worst thing that’s ever happened to me is NOT the type of experience I’d ever want to share in a professional context. Like the guy who asked me about what sort of animal I would be and he got five minutes of nonsense about how my spirit animal was a rabbit given to me by my native ancestors during a quest. I mean, I just haven’t had horrible things happen to me. What was the worst thing that ever happened to you. This is not only in their interest, but also in yours - you don't want to hear a poignant story in a personal interview, build your documentary around it, and then have the person tell you "I am uncomfortable making it public, please don't include it in the movie". Really make them comfortable in the space. Enough with the game-playing! Second, all of those things are not “dealt with it” things, they are “dealing with it” things. Hi guys, This is our reactions mashup on "The worst thing that's ever happened to me".Do you like it???? I could answer that as I’ve had a few emergencies occur on the job (I used to be the opening employer at a day care center and opened the building to discover an intruder) and I could explain how I’m calm under file, etc. but most office jobs are not that. A terrible question to begin with, and a manipulative strategy. And I’m also not gonna share specific details of patient care/injuries for privacy reasons. More silent behaviour changes with C++20 three-way comparison. When I was 16, I interviewed for a retail job at the mall. That preface is like when people start with “Not to be rude, but” or “Nothing personal, but”. Is ‘surviving crimes’ a skill they require me to use on a daily basis? Relevance. If you are talking about an interview that is actually to be filmed, there is no problem wording the question as you see fit, as long as you have previously cleared up with the interviewee what the answer will be. One or two people did speculate that the interviewer might have been trying to get people to talk about personal tragedies. Me: Working for an abusive boss. Glad you were able to think on the spot and make something up. Even if I can think quickly enough to get to a work-related story, I’ve just been forced to relive a series of traumatic events and it’s probably going to take days for me to level out and be okay again. I hope she sued the crap out of him. My completely naive, earnest answer was about seeing my dad flounder and make poor decisions and accepting that I couldn’t help him. About which one do you want to hear more? The weird thing about this question is not just that come people’s worst thing is an unspeakable horror, but that some people’s worst thing is mundane. Yes! Leela, that was exactly what I thought when I first read the letter! Just….ugh. People with well-processed trauma might be able to speak; those with raw trauma won’t. I tailor to the audience, but I have a few go-to’s with crazy drunks, near-misses, or wild coincidences. Thiiis. I would just treat it like a poorly worded version of “what’s the biggest challenge you faced”/”tell me about a time you failed” and describe an unsuccessful project or a sales mishap or something of that sort. So…hire me? Honestly, a sea otter. You talk about handling professional challenges and that’s it. Apparently they cycled people in and out of groups instead of having a stable membership, so everyone was conditioned to lose any sense of not knowing someone well enough to share. I had an interview this morning that was going well until the interviewer said, “I have a very difficult question, but it’s one we’re asking all of our candidates: What is the worst thing that’s ever happened to you, and how did you deal with it?”. Of course this means that sometimes the person will hold back something. I was able to spin it as “of course I haven’t walked in their shoes and can’t believe to imagine what some people have lived through; however I do believe my skills in xyz can apply to abc situations…”. The worst thing that ever happened to me was when I thought my daughter was dying during childbirth. Then, over the holiday weekend, she kept texting me to ask questions about the demo: “What story are you going to teach?” “Will you assign homework?” “Should we test Zoom to see if it works beforehand?” with about twelve hours between each question. In this context, “I know this is a difficult question” is the equivalent of a churlish schoolyard bully saying, “If I ask you something, do you promise not to get mad?”. It is, but not really all that much. Gee, interviewer, would you like me to tell you the personal stuff (the many loved ones I’ve lost to suicide) or keep it strictly professional (workplace shooting when I was 21 years old)? It’s not like they said, “What are your future goals?” and when you said, “Well, I want to start a family soon” they go, “Oh crap, we don’t meant that kind of goal! But more than that you taught me what I’ll never do for someone again. Yeah. The interesting stories are things that I’d mostly call candidates for second worst, perhaps, or things that are among the worst (or best, for that matter) and that I’d think of more readily when asked to describe “a bad experience” or “a challenging experience” rather than something that emphasizes a particular ranking of the experiences. Saying it’s “difficult” but doing it anyway. If I answered honestly – open the floodgates. It’s not a case where it’s poorly constructed delivery. Can I help you?” It’s totally inappropriate. In this case, I’d answer the tell-me-about-a-professional-challenge-and-how-you-handled-it interpretation. or then there’s me. Where would you like me to start: losing my job, getting divorced, or losing my close friend to suicide?”. employer wants me to block sites on my personal laptop, helping an employee who stutters, and more, https://taskandpurpose.com/katie-blanchard-feres-doctrine, expecting too much when interviewing students, what to wear on the first day of a virtual job, and more. The “poor morale” came from the top, and I was the prime target. OP didn’t indicate that this was a job teaching ‘high risk’ youths or adults. “What’s the worst thing that ever happened to you?”. Closed ended are generally yes/no questions. I was also asked this question in a different setting and with the same justification (“What is the most difficult thing you’ve been through in your life” – I clarified and yes they did mean personal life). “Hardest thing” and “toughest challenge” would tell you what I consider to be hard, and how I handled it. Tell me about a work disappointment and how you dealt with that? “. I’d throw the truth at them just to make them uncomfortable. that was suppose o nest with bernice clifton, As a first responder, I get the question, “What’s the worst call you’ve ever been on?” all the time. The real reason was that his marriage had fallen apart and he wanted to get away and start over somewhere new. And yes, of course people can just pick something less personal rather than giving the real answer — but it’s an incredibly intrusive question to ask in the first place. Yes, I thought this.It doesn’t necessarily matter whether they actually use the information to make a hiring decision – if you disclose a disability in response to their questions, and then don’t hire you, you may well believe that their choice was due to their knowledge of your disability, and raise a discrimination complaint. It gives the interviewed person a chance to focus on something more positive. Jeez, it’s a job interview, not an EST session! Answer Save. I could see qualifying that as “What’s the worst thing that ever happened to you professionally” but asking personally? Are we admitting in public those are things now?”. Overcoming a difficult challenge brings the best from a person, and how a challenge is faced varies from person to person. You are NOT responsible for him using your hardwiring against you. I mean, we’ve all read the letter where the LW bit a coworker, right? Can you tell me why you ask it?”. This question would help illustrate some traits potentially unique to the person being interviewed. “Over the course of your career, what was your worst day on the job?” I described the day I knew my last lab job was not going to work over some office drama that boiled down to me not being able to do my job (a specialty skill that no one else there possessed) because no one would take me seriously. I’m really glad you said something to them afterwards! Tell me about a time a time a project at work didn’t go as planned. I have sometimes asked people “what was their worst miss / best catch, and what made it particularly bad or good?” and I often preface it by saying, “I know this might be hard to think of right off the top of your head, but…” and then I’ll often say, “or just any miss / catch that you remember.”, “After all, why would asking about the worst professional experience be considered a ‘difficult question’?”, Here’s some possible Difficult Answers, direct from the AAM archives (in no particular order): Alison – is this question even legal? What is this nut called and can it be removed and reused/replaced? It’s very, very closely related to “I’m just being honest”, which in my experience is code for “I want an excuse to say something mean about someone”. Even then, the results are probably going to not be great. Worst thing that’s happened to me at work was an armed robbery where the gunman shoved his gun into my rib cage. His face got redder, and I kept going. If nothing else, then sitting in an interview raking up every traumatizing and painful memory in your whole life while picking out the juiciest bits for the interviewer is a pretty awful experience on its own. And I certainly wouldn’t want my coworkers to needlessly torture themselves with it. Answer: What’s your security clearance again? I dealt with it by…oh, wait…”, I’ve been asked similar questions before, and to me it always seemed like they were fishing for diversity. By asking for "the worst", you may seem to be asking them to survey all their negative experiences and … Now, what kind of marketing automation software have you used in the past? Apparently this question is seeking out your level of emotional intelligence (did you think something that was just inconvenient was tragic and how did you react) and your resilience(how did you resolve the issue). 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