9 ms·

I have seen several stories like this - the janitor, or secretary, or whoever is actually a trusted individual who is the true judge of character. To me, it se

I have seen several stories like this - the janitor, or secretary, or whoever is actually a trusted individual who is the true judge of character. To me, it seems implausible, more of a "feel good" story, but it also seems ill advised. Does the driver know he's part of the loop? Does the driver attend the debrief? Does the driver distinguish between great, normal, sub-normal, and bad social skills? What portion of jerks would be jerks to a single specific tax driver? Even a big jerk probably isn't a jerk to everyone all the time, and even a nice person may be rude or obnoxious occasionally. Stories like this also remind me of the "Magical Negro" trope where a simple but helpful black person offers sage advise or magic to help the protagonists out of a jam. These "The taxi driver was your real interviewer" stories don't (necessarily) have a racial element, but it's the same, magic wisdom of simple lower class folk idea. When two people don't get along it's hard to find the objective truth by talking to one of them. Maybe the candidate didn't talk to the taxi driver because he was nervously thinking about the interviewer and that came off to the driver as aloof or arrogant. Maybe the driver didn't like the candidate's race, gender, experience, age, etc. Maybe something was said that was misunderstood by one or both parties. Point is - it's a very weak test.

JoBrad 4y ago
I didn’t read it as a deliberate test, but that if the driver let them know the candidate was rude, it would be a negative mark.
- ALittleLight 4y ago
  "The taxi driver would sometimes complain to the people in the hiring loop when a candidate was rude to him." That also seems pretty implausible to me. The taxi driver is going to text or email HR or the hiring manager or someone? How frequently are people so rude to the taxi driver that they are disqualified from consideration? Does the taxi driver get compensated? Why is the taxi driver doing this? Does anybody vet the taxi driver's personality testing ability?
  - krisoft 4y ago
    > The taxi driver is going to text or email HR or the hiring manager or someone? That would be indeed implausible. But not every transaction happens between undeferentiated cogs. A specific person organises the interview logistics from the company. Let’s call him Joe. When they agree with a candidate on an interview date Joe picks up the phone and calls the hotel to book a room. After that Joe calls George the trusted taxi driver they always work with. He lets him know who needs the ride and when. They exchange pleasantries. George also lets him know that the one on Monday cussed him out when he thought George was not driving fast enough. Joe laughs, and tells George that that’s crazy since he is always on time if not early. George feels good about that. He likes that Joe noticed that he is always punctual. They say good byes . Joe makes a mental note to not hire the cussing candidate. What is implausible about this? > How frequently are people so rude to the taxi driver that they are disqualified from consideration? Have you met people? Happens all the time. > Does the taxi driver get compensated? Yes. He receives a steady supply of rides and the company pays him for that. > Why is the taxi driver doing this? He is a human being and those in general don’t like it when someone mistreats them. They let others know when it happens. > Does anybody vet the taxi driver's personality testing ability? Yes. It is called a personal connection. The driver behaves like a decent human being and only rarely say that someone was rude to them so the hiring manager believes them when it happens. I think the reason you find this story implausible is because you are thinking on a different scale. A team of hiring managers managing 500 interviews per week for a megacorp can’t do this. They won’t have the mental bandwidth, they won’t use a specific driver, they won’t have the personal connection. Not every company is that size. Some company might only interview a few people a week.
    - ALittleLight 4y ago
      Since you asked, I find a few things implausible about your story. First, taxi drivers typically work with dispatchers. They aren't scheduling their own calls or schedules - because they are busy driving. Second, in the world of "decades ago" we are pre-smartphone. How, exactly, are you going to call up the taxi driver for a chat? And don't you think the taxi driver is going to notice that he has to take a call from the company after every person he drops off there? Taxi drivers drive dozens of people a day, he's supposed to remember or take notes on some random guy? It's also bizarre to me that the company would have a "trusted taxi driver". A trusted driver for executives or something might make sense, but a trusted driver who isn't employed by your organization that you specifically route candidates through? It just doesn't sound like the type of thing that happens much to me. Finally, on the subject of people being randomly rude to taxi drivers, never having been a taxi driver I don't have real first hand information. I did ride a public city bus multiple times a day for years though and the number of people who I witnessed being rude to the driver, who were not visibly drunk or homeless, is zero. It just doesn't fit with my experience of humanity to think that, in a typical daytime taxi ride you're going to get much absurdly inappropriate behavior - i.e behavior that would rise to the level of disqualifying the candidate. Maybe if the taxi driver were a woman I'd believe it, but I bet the vast majority of people would just say where they wanted to go and little else.
telchior 4y ago
That seems like an unnecessarily convoluted interpretation of a simple idea: does the candidate act like an asshole to a powerless person? OP can report back on what the bar was, but I doubt people were getting rejected simply for being aloof or untalkative. And it's unfair in the opposite direction to try to apply the "Magical Negro" trope to anyone with a blue-collar job. By that bar -- it would be better to completely ignore the driver and treat them as a nonentity, which we (hopefully) know is wrong. Use whatever resources are at your disposal to vet candidates.
- DarylZero 4y ago
  How is it convoluted? Maybe the powerless person is a homophobe. Is that complicated or unrealistic? This story is supposedly about an actual taxi driver, not a plant from HR. It's absurd to trust this person like this.
  - smegsicle 4y ago
    > actual taxi driver, not a plant from HR sounds like both what do you mean when you say "Maybe the powerless person is a homophobe" ?
    - ALittleLight 4y ago
      - ahmeni 4y ago
        I think you've just failed the test.
        Ensorceled 4y ago
        I really think this whole thread is full of people who would fail the “how did they treat the taxi cab driver / waitress” test and are incensed by the idea that they might be judged by that behaviour.
gopher_space 4y ago
One difference you might see is that the stories all have increased rewards for good behavior. Good behavior isn't something that's rewarded outside of childhood, it's just expected to be your default as an adult. The comments above talk about punishment for bad behavior, which happens all day every day. Nobody cares about giving the candidate a 'fair shake' because if you know and trust someone enough to listen to their opinion then "hard pass" is all you need to hear. You've decided the taxi driver was savvy enough to make this call long before this specific incident.
- moistly 4y ago
  > Good behavior isn't something that's rewarded outside of childhood Not true! Yesterday I walked out of a Home Depot with an unpaid drill bit in my shirt pocket (my hands were full). I discovered my error when I reached the car. I went back to pay, and got a 20% discount for being honest!
  - wfme 4y ago
    Except that you would have ended up with a much better price ($0) had you not let them know at all. I'm mostly joking, but if you ignore morals I don't think this is the most sound counterpoint.
    - moistly 4y ago
      But I don’t ignore morals, so your counterpoint is moot.
      - wfme 4y ago
        Hahah right except that in this case the reward is purely intrinsic for returning to pay, while leaving without anyone knowing results in an extrinsic reward ($). "Being rewarded" is generally considered extrinsic otherwise you could just not do some bad thing and claim the feeling of knowing you didn't do the bad thing is a great reward in itself.
Spooky23 4y ago
There’s an element of that, but you may not have seen real assholes in action. I have an admin, and people who treat her poorly pop up all of the time. She’s a trusted person who can wield whatever authority I have in many scenarios. Treating her poorly is rude and gross, but also self-destructive (hint: who actually manages the budget?). Plus, she won’t be an admin forever, and it’s a small world. I worked in retail sales in college and encountered all sorts of people. You get a sense of people when you work with the public. When somebody chooses to exert power over someone where that person lacks agency to respond, that’s a character trait worthy of future consideration.
- Shocka1 4y ago
  Well said. I worked in retail in college as well and it sounds like we porbably have similar stories. I've heard the comment multiple times that everyone should work in a restaurant at least once in their lives so they have a better understanding of what the employees go through. I tend to agree, and I would probably add retail in there as well.
  - greyhair 4y ago
    Everyone should work some form of retail job at least once in their life. I was a motorcycle mechanic for six years before going to college. Some customers where a joy, you looked forward to seeing them, most were just average Joes that needed work done, and a very small few were arrogant self entitled jerks, but it was a job, and you had to deal with it. Some of the nicest people I know have had retail experience in their life.
onion2k 4y ago
The problem is that you're thinking in absolutes. That's not how life works. The driver doean't need to be a formal part of the hiring process that everyone rigorously goes through. There's variation and difference for every candidate. That's just because hiring is a human process. In this case just knowing the driver well enough to ask them "Was that person nice to you?" when they drop a candidate off gets you another very useful signal when the response isn't neutral. A lot of the time it'll be "they were OK", but occasionally you'll get a positive "they treated me like a human being" or a negative "no, they were rude". If you just get an "OK" then you're back to hiring as normal, without the extra data. If you get a positive or negative signal that can amplify what you see in the rest of the hiring process. For me, a tick in the "nice to people you don't have to be nice to" box is a good thing. I like to work with people who have that trait. If I can find a signal that indicates a person has it then I'm going to use it when I'm hiring.
- reificator 4y ago
  > a positive "they treated me like a human being" or a negative "no, they were rude" That's the whole range eh?
  - Wires77 4y ago
    > A lot of the time it'll be "they were OK", but occasionally you'll get[...] Missed this first half of the sentence.
    - reificator 4y ago
      So our range is somewhere around: - They were OK - They treated me like a human being - They were rude There's no room for "We had an interesting conversation" or "They gave me some good advice" or "I think I made a new friend"? Not even "They seemed like a good person"? The maximum is "They treated me like a human being" which is somehow above "They were OK"?
      - yukinon 4y ago
smegsicle 4y ago
i think the reason that "magical negro" is considered offensive is that it only makes sense (as a trope) when the advice is coming from an unexpected source, which shows that the filmmakers considered "negro" an unexpected source. here the treatment of a person of actual lower class is included as a point of reference in the interview process. it is implied that previous iterations of the hiring process failed to weed out people who were rude when the thought they could get away with it. what are you thinking is the implied purpose of such a strange test?
Decker87 4y ago
Hiring is imperfect, and doesn't involve anything bordering on "objective truth".
Fezzik 4y ago
Somewhat related to the anecdote you’re skeptical of: I was a law clerk for multiple years for a presiding judge and if you were a wise attorney rule #1 was be kind to the administrative staff at the courthouse - judges would find out if you were rude and while no-one was ever unethical, in my opinion, arrogant attorneys were definitely grilled more than polite ones. Kindness gets you a long way. And if you were a jerk to my secretary I was definitely not putting in the extra effort to dig through the two-foot stack of motions we got everyday to fast track your motion to postpone to the presiding judge. It’s not my fault you filed it at the 11th hour.
- Corrado 4y ago
  I've realized the same thing during my career in IT. Being nice (to everyone, but especially) to the boss's assistant paid off time and again. I can't tell you the number of things I got done for me around the office specifically because I wasn't a jerk. Need new batteries for my pager? Done! Would like some updated business cards? Done! My desk phone needs replacing. Done!
  - FabHK 4y ago
    The power wielded by the secretary and assistant of the boss seems to be under-appreciated by some here.
    - webmobdev 4y ago
      There are power-tripping-pain-in-the-secretaries too.
- greyhair 4y ago
  You catch more flys with sugar than with vinegar.
  - Semiapies 4y ago
    Weirdly enough, not true for flies. They love vinegar.
silversmith 4y ago
And maybe the candidate came in with a haircut that reminded the interviewer of an abusive ex partner. Let's not pretend that interviewers are somehow objective judges of character - each and every one of us has biases, and that's okay. I very much doubt that the taxi driver in this story had hiring veto powers. But as a "does this person act as an asshole" test, with possible results of "yes" and "maybe" is still very valuable - you get to remove the (apparent) assholes from your selection pool, and focus on those that might have enough decency to not be assholes in public. And often enough that's all you need. If you are always polite and respectful in public, but secretly get off on feeding baby chicks to your pet snake... that's weird, but not a dealbreaker for working together. As long as there's no spillover into your public life, I'm not here to judge.
nojito 4y ago
My VP poses as an analyst when "running into people" who are waiting for interviews. They then reach out to the hiring manager to give their opinion of the candidate.

JoBrad 4y ago

I didn’t read it as a deliberate test, but that if the driver let them know the candidate was rude, it would be a negative mark.

ALittleLight 4y ago
"The taxi driver would sometimes complain to the people in the hiring loop when a candidate was rude to him." That also seems pretty implausible to me. The taxi driver is going to text or email HR or the hiring manager or someone? How frequently are people so rude to the taxi driver that they are disqualified from consideration? Does the taxi driver get compensated? Why is the taxi driver doing this? Does anybody vet the taxi driver's personality testing ability?
- krisoft 4y ago
  > The taxi driver is going to text or email HR or the hiring manager or someone? That would be indeed implausible. But not every transaction happens between undeferentiated cogs. A specific person organises the interview logistics from the company. Let’s call him Joe. When they agree with a candidate on an interview date Joe picks up the phone and calls the hotel to book a room. After that Joe calls George the trusted taxi driver they always work with. He lets him know who needs the ride and when. They exchange pleasantries. George also lets him know that the one on Monday cussed him out when he thought George was not driving fast enough. Joe laughs, and tells George that that’s crazy since he is always on time if not early. George feels good about that. He likes that Joe noticed that he is always punctual. They say good byes . Joe makes a mental note to not hire the cussing candidate. What is implausible about this? > How frequently are people so rude to the taxi driver that they are disqualified from consideration? Have you met people? Happens all the time. > Does the taxi driver get compensated? Yes. He receives a steady supply of rides and the company pays him for that. > Why is the taxi driver doing this? He is a human being and those in general don’t like it when someone mistreats them. They let others know when it happens. > Does anybody vet the taxi driver's personality testing ability? Yes. It is called a personal connection. The driver behaves like a decent human being and only rarely say that someone was rude to them so the hiring manager believes them when it happens. I think the reason you find this story implausible is because you are thinking on a different scale. A team of hiring managers managing 500 interviews per week for a megacorp can’t do this. They won’t have the mental bandwidth, they won’t use a specific driver, they won’t have the personal connection. Not every company is that size. Some company might only interview a few people a week.
  - ALittleLight 4y ago
    Since you asked, I find a few things implausible about your story. First, taxi drivers typically work with dispatchers. They aren't scheduling their own calls or schedules - because they are busy driving. Second, in the world of "decades ago" we are pre-smartphone. How, exactly, are you going to call up the taxi driver for a chat? And don't you think the taxi driver is going to notice that he has to take a call from the company after every person he drops off there? Taxi drivers drive dozens of people a day, he's supposed to remember or take notes on some random guy? It's also bizarre to me that the company would have a "trusted taxi driver". A trusted driver for executives or something might make sense, but a trusted driver who isn't employed by your organization that you specifically route candidates through? It just doesn't sound like the type of thing that happens much to me. Finally, on the subject of people being randomly rude to taxi drivers, never having been a taxi driver I don't have real first hand information. I did ride a public city bus multiple times a day for years though and the number of people who I witnessed being rude to the driver, who were not visibly drunk or homeless, is zero. It just doesn't fit with my experience of humanity to think that, in a typical daytime taxi ride you're going to get much absurdly inappropriate behavior - i.e behavior that would rise to the level of disqualifying the candidate. Maybe if the taxi driver were a woman I'd believe it, but I bet the vast majority of people would just say where they wanted to go and little else.

telchior 4y ago

That seems like an unnecessarily convoluted interpretation of a simple idea: does the candidate act like an asshole to a powerless person? OP can report back on what the bar was, but I doubt people were getting rejected simply for being aloof or untalkative. And it's unfair in the opposite direction to try to apply the "Magical Negro" trope to anyone with a blue-collar job. By that bar -- it would be better to completely ignore the driver and treat them as a nonentity, which we (hopefully) know is wrong. Use whatever resources are at your disposal to vet candidates.

DarylZero 4y ago
How is it convoluted? Maybe the powerless person is a homophobe. Is that complicated or unrealistic? This story is supposedly about an actual taxi driver, not a plant from HR. It's absurd to trust this person like this.
- smegsicle 4y ago
  > actual taxi driver, not a plant from HR sounds like both what do you mean when you say "Maybe the powerless person is a homophobe" ?
  - ALittleLight 4y ago
    - ahmeni 4y ago
      I think you've just failed the test.
      - Ensorceled 4y ago
        I really think this whole thread is full of people who would fail the “how did they treat the taxi cab driver / waitress” test and are incensed by the idea that they might be judged by that behaviour.

gopher_space 4y ago

One difference you might see is that the stories all have increased rewards for good behavior. Good behavior isn't something that's rewarded outside of childhood, it's just expected to be your default as an adult. The comments above talk about punishment for bad behavior, which happens all day every day. Nobody cares about giving the candidate a 'fair shake' because if you know and trust someone enough to listen to their opinion then "hard pass" is all you need to hear. You've decided the taxi driver was savvy enough to make this call long before this specific incident.

moistly 4y ago
> Good behavior isn't something that's rewarded outside of childhood Not true! Yesterday I walked out of a Home Depot with an unpaid drill bit in my shirt pocket (my hands were full). I discovered my error when I reached the car. I went back to pay, and got a 20% discount for being honest!
- wfme 4y ago
  Except that you would have ended up with a much better price ($0) had you not let them know at all. I'm mostly joking, but if you ignore morals I don't think this is the most sound counterpoint.
  - moistly 4y ago
    But I don’t ignore morals, so your counterpoint is moot.
    - wfme 4y ago
      Hahah right except that in this case the reward is purely intrinsic for returning to pay, while leaving without anyone knowing results in an extrinsic reward ($). "Being rewarded" is generally considered extrinsic otherwise you could just not do some bad thing and claim the feeling of knowing you didn't do the bad thing is a great reward in itself.

Spooky23 4y ago

There’s an element of that, but you may not have seen real assholes in action. I have an admin, and people who treat her poorly pop up all of the time. She’s a trusted person who can wield whatever authority I have in many scenarios. Treating her poorly is rude and gross, but also self-destructive (hint: who actually manages the budget?). Plus, she won’t be an admin forever, and it’s a small world. I worked in retail sales in college and encountered all sorts of people. You get a sense of people when you work with the public. When somebody chooses to exert power over someone where that person lacks agency to respond, that’s a character trait worthy of future consideration.

Shocka1 4y ago
Well said. I worked in retail in college as well and it sounds like we porbably have similar stories. I've heard the comment multiple times that everyone should work in a restaurant at least once in their lives so they have a better understanding of what the employees go through. I tend to agree, and I would probably add retail in there as well.
- greyhair 4y ago
  Everyone should work some form of retail job at least once in their life. I was a motorcycle mechanic for six years before going to college. Some customers where a joy, you looked forward to seeing them, most were just average Joes that needed work done, and a very small few were arrogant self entitled jerks, but it was a job, and you had to deal with it. Some of the nicest people I know have had retail experience in their life.

onion2k 4y ago

The problem is that you're thinking in absolutes. That's not how life works. The driver doean't need to be a formal part of the hiring process that everyone rigorously goes through. There's variation and difference for every candidate. That's just because hiring is a human process. In this case just knowing the driver well enough to ask them "Was that person nice to you?" when they drop a candidate off gets you another very useful signal when the response isn't neutral. A lot of the time it'll be "they were OK", but occasionally you'll get a positive "they treated me like a human being" or a negative "no, they were rude". If you just get an "OK" then you're back to hiring as normal, without the extra data. If you get a positive or negative signal that can amplify what you see in the rest of the hiring process. For me, a tick in the "nice to people you don't have to be nice to" box is a good thing. I like to work with people who have that trait. If I can find a signal that indicates a person has it then I'm going to use it when I'm hiring.

reificator 4y ago
> a positive "they treated me like a human being" or a negative "no, they were rude" That's the whole range eh?
- Wires77 4y ago
  > A lot of the time it'll be "they were OK", but occasionally you'll get[...] Missed this first half of the sentence.
  - reificator 4y ago
    So our range is somewhere around: - They were OK - They treated me like a human being - They were rude There's no room for "We had an interesting conversation" or "They gave me some good advice" or "I think I made a new friend"? Not even "They seemed like a good person"? The maximum is "They treated me like a human being" which is somehow above "They were OK"?
    - yukinon 4y ago

smegsicle 4y ago

i think the reason that "magical negro" is considered offensive is that it only makes sense (as a trope) when the advice is coming from an unexpected source, which shows that the filmmakers considered "negro" an unexpected source. here the treatment of a person of actual lower class is included as a point of reference in the interview process. it is implied that previous iterations of the hiring process failed to weed out people who were rude when the thought they could get away with it. what are you thinking is the implied purpose of such a strange test?

Decker87 4y ago

Hiring is imperfect, and doesn't involve anything bordering on "objective truth".

Fezzik 4y ago

Somewhat related to the anecdote you’re skeptical of: I was a law clerk for multiple years for a presiding judge and if you were a wise attorney rule #1 was be kind to the administrative staff at the courthouse - judges would find out if you were rude and while no-one was ever unethical, in my opinion, arrogant attorneys were definitely grilled more than polite ones. Kindness gets you a long way. And if you were a jerk to my secretary I was definitely not putting in the extra effort to dig through the two-foot stack of motions we got everyday to fast track your motion to postpone to the presiding judge. It’s not my fault you filed it at the 11th hour.

Corrado 4y ago
I've realized the same thing during my career in IT. Being nice (to everyone, but especially) to the boss's assistant paid off time and again. I can't tell you the number of things I got done for me around the office specifically because I wasn't a jerk. Need new batteries for my pager? Done! Would like some updated business cards? Done! My desk phone needs replacing. Done!
- FabHK 4y ago
  The power wielded by the secretary and assistant of the boss seems to be under-appreciated by some here.
  - webmobdev 4y ago
    There are power-tripping-pain-in-the-secretaries too.
greyhair 4y ago
You catch more flys with sugar than with vinegar.
- Semiapies 4y ago
  Weirdly enough, not true for flies. They love vinegar.

silversmith 4y ago

And maybe the candidate came in with a haircut that reminded the interviewer of an abusive ex partner. Let's not pretend that interviewers are somehow objective judges of character - each and every one of us has biases, and that's okay. I very much doubt that the taxi driver in this story had hiring veto powers. But as a "does this person act as an asshole" test, with possible results of "yes" and "maybe" is still very valuable - you get to remove the (apparent) assholes from your selection pool, and focus on those that might have enough decency to not be assholes in public. And often enough that's all you need. If you are always polite and respectful in public, but secretly get off on feeding baby chicks to your pet snake... that's weird, but not a dealbreaker for working together. As long as there's no spillover into your public life, I'm not here to judge.

nojito 4y ago

My VP poses as an analyst when "running into people" who are waiting for interviews. They then reach out to the hiring manager to give their opinion of the candidate.