(I work as a manager in a tutoring center. At first, the owner makes it very clear how much she values me, but as time goes on, she begins to micromanage and scapegoat me whenever she feels stressed about the state of the business — it isn’t doing well. She writes me up for putting a pen in the cup next to the one designated for pens, one of the rugs having a corner folded over, and a canister of wet wipes being left slightly ajar by someone else.)

Manager: “If you were detail-oriented, you would have noticed and closed it.”

(She writes me a schedule for the day broken into thirty-minute increments with every individual task allotted a certain amount of time. She does this because I “need structure,” but she often completely ignores the appointments I have set with parents or school officials when she puts the schedule together. Also, she has a very limited understanding of our computer system, so her time breakdowns are often completely arbitrary. I do my best to complete the tasks set, often staying an hour or more after closing, but she isn’t satisfied. She demands that I give her a detailed written explanation of what I have done — and why it has taken so long — because I obviously am not being efficient with my time. One of her favorite things to do is to tell me that she is looking for someone more organized to help take over some of my duties, because she knows that isn’t my strong suit.)

Manager: “You know I want to make this work, but I need to have someone who’s detail-oriented.”

(One day, she lets me know that she’s hired someone who she hopes will be able to “pick up the slack.”)

Me: *cheerily* “I think that’s actually great timing since I am giving my two weeks’ notice.”

Manager: *gulps and stares at me* “T-two weeks?”

Me: “Yes, my last day will be on [date]. I’ll be happy to help train the new staff member.”

(She gets up and walks out of the office for several minutes before coming back and saying:)

Manager: “I— I feel like I’m going to have a heart attack.”

(She proceeds to beg me to come back and help, even if only for an hour at a time, after the two weeks are over. After a moment’s thought — and the offer of a considerable raise — I decide that I’m not opposed to pitching in every so often. First, though, I plan to take several weeks off after my official “last” day. When I come back from my vacation, she says:)

Manager: “Thank you for coming, [My Name]. We were lost without you!”

(She wasn’t exaggerating; they were failing to collect tuition, missing meetings with parents, and under- or overbooking teachers’ schedules. And the new person she hired? She showed up late, begged off early, and demanded a vacation one week into working for the center. But at least she was detail-oriented.)

(I tutor English as a Second Language students at their homes. I assign homework to students each week. My students are usually quite young, so very often my homework is left undone for various reasons. I’m usually quite understanding if they have a good reason. This particular student has been neglecting most of her work because she was busy playing. I’m talking to her before I leave her house.)

Me: “[Student], can you try to finish some of your homework? It’s quite the waste of your parents’ money right now to just attend an hour of lessons per week without doing the assigned work.”

Student: “But I’m going on holiday next week! I’m going to [Overseas Country]!”

Me: “That sounds fun. But the homework that I’m talking about is the one the one from around three weeks ago.”

Student: *clearly not listening* “Maybe I’ll buy you a gift from [Overseas Country]!”

Me: “How about this? Instead of buying me a present, you bring me the gift of your completed homework!”

Student: “Ha ha, no.” *bounces away*

(I’m a college student and I tutor kids. It’s a very casual job as I teach the kids of families who I know personally, so there’s not too much worry about how I’m doing or what I’m doing, as long as the kid is improving. I can even do it online, as we can file-share and call/Skype, although I generally prefer to start the first few sessions in-person. One day, I get a new student who is 13 years old, hates reading and writing, and just generally does not want to be there. This is our first session. We’re working online, so I can’t gauge how much of his attention I actually have.)

Me: “Okay, so now that I’ve explained what a run-on sentence is, can you find the rest of the run-on sentences in the paragraph?”

Kid: “Hmm, yeah…”

Me: “…Are you doing it?”

Kid: “Right… right. So, you want me to edit the paragraph, right?”

Me: “Kind of. Do you remember what I just said about the run-on sentences?”

Kid: “Yeah.” *he immediately starts deleting things and rewriting, obviously having not heard one word of what I said to him*

Me: “Okay, okay, stop. Stop that right now. Here’s what we’re going to do. I need you to stand up.”

Kid: “Uh… what?”

Me: “Stand up. Trust me.”

Kid: “Okay, I’m up.”

Me: “Say this three times: “I will pay attention to what [My Name] tells me. If I get distracted, I will ask for a quick break.””

Kid: *silent for a REALLY long time* “[My Name]… are you psychic?!”

Me: “Well… let’s just say I can tell when you’re not focusing. Can we make a deal?”

Kid: “Okay.”

Me: “I will try to make the sessions more interesting, and I will add reading topics on things I know you like, as long as you promise to pay attention to the boring stuff we have to get through, too. And if you lose concentration, you have to tell me. We can take a break, I don’t mind. But you won’t get better if you aren’t at least trying.”

Kid: “I guess that’s fair.”

Me: “These sessions are for you. If you don’t feel more confident about what you’re learning, what’s the point, right?”

Kid: “Yeah, I guess so. Can I write about electric cars in the next session?”

(Since this session, I’ve been working with him for six months. I’m very proud of the improvements he’s made — leaps and bounds! But most of all, the lesson that he really took away from all this? He tells me everything so that I won’t find out by “digging through his mind using my psychic abilities” anymore. I’ve tried telling him I’m not really psychic, but he promises he’ll keep my superpower a secret.)

I had a babysitter once who I found out was in the ‘slow’ class and I couldn’t understand why, since she seemed like a normally intelligent kid.

She said it was her math; she just didn’t understand it and could never get it right. I told her to come over after school and I’d tutor her.

I decided to start at the beginning so I could judge where she was, and got out the penny jar to use in demonstrating basic adding and subtracting.

I soon came to realise that she had absolutely no concept of written numbers. She’d see a number and it was just a meaningless squiggle to her. She was trying to memorize them and remember what it meant when you had one squiggle and did something with it with another squiggle. I have never come across this before and have no idea what you’d call it. I’m sure it has a name.

So, we started with the pennies, me showing her that this squiggle meant these many pennies and onward and upward, and it didn’t really take long, once we figured out the problem, to get her all caught up. She graduated high school in a ‘regular’ class with her age mates.

But I CANNOT understand how this child got to grade ten without any of her ‘educators’ figuring this out!

(I am looking for a summer job in law school and I apply to an LSAT tutoring company. They give me a Skype interview where I have to go through a practice problem as if I were teaching it to a student.)

Me: “So, do you want me to demonstrate the problem, or go through it in Socratic Method?”

(Socratic Method is where you ask the person questions so that they figure it out themselves.)

Interviewer: “Doesn’t matter to me, man.”

(I go ahead and demonstrate the problem, figuring it is a lot easier than trying to walk the interviewer through it Socratically. After I’m done, the interviewer says:)

Interviewer: “Okay, that was fine, but unfortunately we wanted you to teach it Socratically.”

Me: “Okay, but I asked you specifically at the beginning if you wanted me to, and you said I didn’t need to.”

Interviewer: “Hm… I don’t remember that.”

Me: “Well, do you want me to teach it Socratically now, then?”

Interviewer: “Meh, sure. Go ahead.”

Me: “Okay, so, starting from the beginning, what’s the first thing we need to figure out about the problem?”

Interviewer: “I don’t know.”

Me: *slightly taken aback, I go even simpler* “Okay, so, what information do we know from the problem?”

Interviewer: “I don’t know.”

Me: *getting frustrated* “Okay, starting with the first sentence, what does it tell us?”

Interviewer: “I don’t know.”

Me: “Okay, the first sentence says, ‘[Sentence],’ doesn’t it?”

Interviewer: “I don’t know.”

(The entire rest of the interview proceeded like this, with the interviewer never answering anything other than, ‘I don’t know.’ He made me basically go through the entire problem myself without making any attempt to role-play as a student, meaning that I basically just ended up demonstrating the problem all over again but much slower. I should also note that this was a tutoring position for LSAT, which means that all of the students I would have been tutoring would have at least three years of university behind them. If any of their students were as dumb as the interviewer was playing them to be, they don’t deserve to pass the LSAT.)

This story is part of the second Job Interview roundup! This is the last story in the roundup, but we have plenty of others you might enjoy!

10 Hilarious Stories About The Worst Job Interviews Ever!

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