4 ms·

I interviewed at Burger King in college, the manager told me I was the only applicant in their system to get above 80% on the personality test. It was incredibl

I interviewed at Burger King in college, the manager told me I was the only applicant in their system to get above 80% on the personality test. It was incredibly easy things like, "How many minutes are acceptable to show up late for your shift? 5 minutes, 15 minutes, 30 minutes, being late is unacceptable". Or "If you knew there were no cameras able to see you, and no other employees around, how much money is okay to take from the register? $1, $5, $20, any amount is unacceptable" He said something along the lines of "I know some employees are going to try to steal from the register, but why would they admit that in an interview?

ChicagoBoy11 3y ago
Did you ask to see which questions you supposedly got wrong?
- inputError 3y ago
  "How much sawdust is legally acceptable to put in the chicken tenders breading? 10%, 25%, 50%, sawdust in the chicken tenders breading is unacceptable". OP put unacceptable but the answer was 25%
- squeaky-clean 3y ago
  He refused to tell me, but I'm betting it was one about getting called in to work on a day off because someone else called out with no notice.
itronitron 3y ago
"How many questions is it acceptable to lie on when taking a personality test? 10 lies, 5 lies, 2 lies, lying on a personality test is unacceptable."
dboreham 3y ago
Reminds me of the narcissistic personality disorder test which consists of one question: "are you a narcissist?"
- H8crilA 3y ago
  A nobody such as yourself should not be asking me this question! Where's the manager?
layer8 3y ago
> why would they admit that in an interview? To demonstrate their honesty. ;)
strictnein 3y ago
In college I worked at Circuit City selling computers. Lots of similar questions. "Is it okay to take display merchandise if others are doing it?" type stuff. Definitely weeds out some people I guess.
- NegativeK 3y ago
  Seems like it'd weed out people who are caught easily..
- jimt1234 3y ago
  Same here. I worked at Circuit City during college, and had a similar interview, although it was more like an interrogation. I was asked the same question multiple times: "Is it okay to take stuff home from work, even something simple like a pen?" The interviewer kept leaning into me, like a detective questioning a murder suspect, trying to break me. It was bizarre.
HideousKojima 3y ago
I applied for a software development job at a regional bank and had to take a similar test. Questions along the lines of "When is it appropriate to sell drugs to your coworkers?" I get the feeling it was intended more for tellers and other low level employees given the nature of a lot of the questions, but it had one or two ambiguous questions that tripped me up because neither extreme of the multiple choice options seemed moral. They never asked me to interview and I wonder if my "wrong" answers to the ambiguous questions disqualified me.
kemayo 3y ago
I took one once (at iZod, I think), which included some tripwire questions. The manager said afterwards that e.g. if you saw "a customer left $0.02 in change on the counter when they left the store, what do you do?" and you picked "I chase them down the block to give it back", that's a sign that you're bullshitting the questions too hard.
- yvan-eht-nioj 3y ago
  Or, someone might also have a sense of karmic justice, whereby $0.02 is the same as $200 in the ethical context of returning a lost object to its owner. The manager sounds like they'd be happy to steal your wages, as long as it was "only a small amount". You dodged a bullet there.
  - kemayo 3y ago
    I mean, from the perspective of the manager, you really don't want an employee who's going to run out of the store to return an amount of money that won't matter to the customer. One can understand a peculiar value system, and also think that the conclusions it reaches are bad for your situation. (See also: "it's okay to take money from the cash register if I need it".) I also think that going from that question to them stealing your wages can only be fairly analogized if it's a similarly insignificant amount. Is it wage theft if they underpay me by $0.02? Yes. Does it really matter? Not to me.
    - yvan-eht-nioj 3y ago
      I suppose it depends if you believe in principle over pragmatism. Personally, for me the amount is irrelevant; action and intent is what matters, so in some contexts $0.02 would absolutely matter to me.
      - lmm 3y ago
        If getting on with your job when a customer has left $0.02 on the counter would be such a severe violation of your principles, you're likely unsuitable for jobs.
zoky 3y ago
Well, I guess one way of looking at it is would you rather have the guy who truthfully told you that it was okay to steal $1 from the register, or the guy who lied about saying any amount was unacceptable?
vpilcx 3y ago
Maybe that was a while ago, because almost all of the personality tests that I've had to take are, question: "I enjoy the challenge of collaborating with my coworkers" answer: strongly agree, slightly agree, neither agree nor disagree, slightly disagree, strongly agree With the questions all being like that with different wording, "I find myself getting frustrated in high stress situations.", "I enjoy high stress situations because they are exciting.", "Being around a lot of people all the time can be annoying", etc. Over and over and over again for about fifteen minutes.
fardo 3y ago
> "I know some employees are going to try to steal from the register, but why would they admit that in an interview?“ A lot of the time, it’s an unfamiliarity with “test taking as being a test of determining theory of mind of the test-giver”. Rather than answering however they think the test-giver would want the answers to look like, they approach the test with alternative less useful approaches, ones like “holistic reframed hypotheticals” where they’re thinking of the situation in a modified hypothetical with a real world context introduced and with information that might dramatically change one’s answer, such as “assume you’ve learned a coworker has taken some money out of the cash-drawer, how much money would be your threshold to snitch on them to management versus E.G. just asking them to put the money back?”, for which many people’s answer will not be “even one dollar”. It is a trained skill to know this is a flawed approach and that broadly, “most tests don’t want you to make outside assumptions or reframe situations, and you should default to using strict and as-literal-as-possible interpretations of questions”.
- lupire 3y ago
  Except you also have to account for the low IQ test writer being unable to write what they intended to ask.

ChicagoBoy11 3y ago

Did you ask to see which questions you supposedly got wrong?

inputError 3y ago
"How much sawdust is legally acceptable to put in the chicken tenders breading? 10%, 25%, 50%, sawdust in the chicken tenders breading is unacceptable". OP put unacceptable but the answer was 25%
squeaky-clean 3y ago
He refused to tell me, but I'm betting it was one about getting called in to work on a day off because someone else called out with no notice.

itronitron 3y ago

"How many questions is it acceptable to lie on when taking a personality test? 10 lies, 5 lies, 2 lies, lying on a personality test is unacceptable."

dboreham 3y ago

Reminds me of the narcissistic personality disorder test which consists of one question: "are you a narcissist?"

H8crilA 3y ago
A nobody such as yourself should not be asking me this question! Where's the manager?

layer8 3y ago

> why would they admit that in an interview? To demonstrate their honesty. ;)

strictnein 3y ago

In college I worked at Circuit City selling computers. Lots of similar questions. "Is it okay to take display merchandise if others are doing it?" type stuff. Definitely weeds out some people I guess.

NegativeK 3y ago
Seems like it'd weed out people who are caught easily..
jimt1234 3y ago
Same here. I worked at Circuit City during college, and had a similar interview, although it was more like an interrogation. I was asked the same question multiple times: "Is it okay to take stuff home from work, even something simple like a pen?" The interviewer kept leaning into me, like a detective questioning a murder suspect, trying to break me. It was bizarre.

HideousKojima 3y ago

I applied for a software development job at a regional bank and had to take a similar test. Questions along the lines of "When is it appropriate to sell drugs to your coworkers?" I get the feeling it was intended more for tellers and other low level employees given the nature of a lot of the questions, but it had one or two ambiguous questions that tripped me up because neither extreme of the multiple choice options seemed moral. They never asked me to interview and I wonder if my "wrong" answers to the ambiguous questions disqualified me.

kemayo 3y ago

I took one once (at iZod, I think), which included some tripwire questions. The manager said afterwards that e.g. if you saw "a customer left $0.02 in change on the counter when they left the store, what do you do?" and you picked "I chase them down the block to give it back", that's a sign that you're bullshitting the questions too hard.

yvan-eht-nioj 3y ago
Or, someone might also have a sense of karmic justice, whereby $0.02 is the same as $200 in the ethical context of returning a lost object to its owner. The manager sounds like they'd be happy to steal your wages, as long as it was "only a small amount". You dodged a bullet there.
- kemayo 3y ago
  I mean, from the perspective of the manager, you really don't want an employee who's going to run out of the store to return an amount of money that won't matter to the customer. One can understand a peculiar value system, and also think that the conclusions it reaches are bad for your situation. (See also: "it's okay to take money from the cash register if I need it".) I also think that going from that question to them stealing your wages can only be fairly analogized if it's a similarly insignificant amount. Is it wage theft if they underpay me by $0.02? Yes. Does it really matter? Not to me.
  - yvan-eht-nioj 3y ago
    I suppose it depends if you believe in principle over pragmatism. Personally, for me the amount is irrelevant; action and intent is what matters, so in some contexts $0.02 would absolutely matter to me.
    - lmm 3y ago
      If getting on with your job when a customer has left $0.02 on the counter would be such a severe violation of your principles, you're likely unsuitable for jobs.

zoky 3y ago

Well, I guess one way of looking at it is would you rather have the guy who truthfully told you that it was okay to steal $1 from the register, or the guy who lied about saying any amount was unacceptable?

vpilcx 3y ago

Maybe that was a while ago, because almost all of the personality tests that I've had to take are, question: "I enjoy the challenge of collaborating with my coworkers" answer: strongly agree, slightly agree, neither agree nor disagree, slightly disagree, strongly agree With the questions all being like that with different wording, "I find myself getting frustrated in high stress situations.", "I enjoy high stress situations because they are exciting.", "Being around a lot of people all the time can be annoying", etc. Over and over and over again for about fifteen minutes.

fardo 3y ago

> "I know some employees are going to try to steal from the register, but why would they admit that in an interview?“ A lot of the time, it’s an unfamiliarity with “test taking as being a test of determining theory of mind of the test-giver”. Rather than answering however they think the test-giver would want the answers to look like, they approach the test with alternative less useful approaches, ones like “holistic reframed hypotheticals” where they’re thinking of the situation in a modified hypothetical with a real world context introduced and with information that might dramatically change one’s answer, such as “assume you’ve learned a coworker has taken some money out of the cash-drawer, how much money would be your threshold to snitch on them to management versus E.G. just asking them to put the money back?”, for which many people’s answer will not be “even one dollar”. It is a trained skill to know this is a flawed approach and that broadly, “most tests don’t want you to make outside assumptions or reframe situations, and you should default to using strict and as-literal-as-possible interpretations of questions”.

lupire 3y ago
Except you also have to account for the low IQ test writer being unable to write what they intended to ask.