Poosey Digest: How many rolls of toilet paper?

Greetings from Poosey.

The nervous young man sat across from Chuck Schnitker and his eyes blinked in confusion. “What, sir?”

Chuck repeated the question. “When you buy toilet paper, how many rolls do you buy at a time?” Chuck was the manager of our local feed mill and he’d conducted hundreds of job interviews over the years. The young job applicant didn’t know that Schnitker always ended his interviews with this question. The young man swallowed hard then said, “Uh… I never really thought about it. Maybe… I don’t know… six?” Chuck shook his head. “Well, I guess you’ll do, but I was hoping for a better answer.”

The feed mill manager was a frugal fellow. He never hired anyone to shovel the mill’s driveway when he was able to do it himself, he did his own sweeping and cleaning around the plant, and the stockholders in the Poosey Feed and Grain could always be assured that Chuck would never waste a nickel of the firm’s money. He’d landed upon the toilet paper question as the ultimate guide into an applicant’s thriftiness. Anyone who buys his toilet paper in quantities of less than 12 could use a lesson in how to save money.

In spite of so much of business and commerce taking place online, the face-to-face job interview hasn’t been replaced.  President Lyndon Johnson once told his aids, “Don’t show me a damned piece of paper and a picture. Sit that rascal down in front of me. I want to see his eyes.”

Microsoft is famous in the industry for its strange interview questions. “How many golf balls would it take to fill a 747?” and “Why is a manhole cover round?” Candidates at SpaceX are often asked, “When a hot dog expands, in which direction does it split and why?” If you apply for a position at Whole Foods Market you might be asked, “Would you rather fight 1 horse-sized duck or 100 duck-sized horses?” Young men and women sitting for a job interview at Trader Joe’s are often asked, “What would you do if you found a penguin in the freezer?” The CEO of Delta Airlines says that the trick is to come up with questions for which the applicant it not prepared.

One of my favorite local employers was an iconic sage who ran his business like it was his family. The fellow employed perhaps two dozen folks in his large-scale farming operation and he’d begin every interview with, “Okay feller, just what church do you attend?” When federal hiring regulations came out about 30 years ago his sons warned him that such questions were no longer allowed. This bothered my old friend a great deal but his boys insisted that their father stick strictly to federal guidelines or the business would be subject to fines and litigation. The very next day a man applied for a job and so the boys’ father began the interview with, “Okay feller, just where would I find you on Sunday morning?”

With 45 % of our population saying that they’re currently looking for a new position, it might benefit today’s young crop of job seekers to bone up on questions other than the usual, “Where do you see yourself in five years?” or “What are your strengths and weaknesses?” A friend of mine who is in charge of hiring for a large retail firm once told me that she paid little attention to a job applicant’s answers, instead being more interested in their questions. “I want to know their interest in our company. The way people jump from job to job these days loyalty becomes as important as their job skills.”

The airwaves have been filled this season with congressional hearings investigating various candidates for cabinet posts and below them there are untold thousands being interviewed for lesser positions. In most cases the interviews are merely a platform showcase for the congresspersons asking the questions, and as with most things congressional, the votes are already tallied before the discussion begins. The old showboats of the Mississippi could never hold a candle to the calliope-voiced interrogators sitting behind their mahogany dais.  Since these are the folks in charge of handling our tax money I wonder if they might do better by simply asking Chuck’s “How many rolls of toilet paper to you buy at a time?”

You ever ’round Poosey, stop by. We may not answer the door but you’ll enjoy the trip.