Here is a sampling of interview situations that actually happened to me:
* I snagged an interview at a university in the Washington, DC area which meant that I had to fly from Wisconsin to DC during an ice storm. They closed National Airport shortly after my plane landed. Classes were cancelled at the university the next day, so my interview was cancelled, but I met with one interviewer because she was stuck on campus. The interview was rescheduled for the following Monday because I happened to have made arrangements to stay in town all weekend.
* Some employees with the Wisconsin Department of Corrections bent the rules to interview me for the prison librarian job at the women's prison. This was the only time that I was offered a job which I turned down.
* My first interview out of library school took place on a cold Wisconsin night in January 1991. The interview was for the director of a small public library in central Wisconsin. It was an evening interview and the temperatures were in the teens. I borrowed a car from my roommates that didn't have heat for the two hour journey to the interview. Despite wearing my subzero parka, I had to stop at a rest area to use the hand dryer to warm up. By the time I got to this small town, I was near frozen. I had hoped to warm up during the tour of the library, but it was one of those two room public libraries. I ended up thawing out during the interview with the worst case of shakes I have ever had in my life.
* A couple of years later I set up an interview at Richard Daley Community College on south Chicago. The rental car company fucked up my plans, so I was running late despite driving like a maniac from Wisconsin. When I got to the library, I saw this big painting of Richard Daley, Sr. on the wall behind the circ desk. I took one look around the underfunded library and left the building. The next day they called me and asked if I still wanted to interview.
* Several years ago I was interviewing at Aspen Systems, a government subcontractor in Maryland. During the interview the interviewer guy left me in the room so he could get some cake at a departmental birthday party.
* A couple of years ago I had an interview with a rich environmental nonprofit in Rosslyn, VA. Usually you expect less than two hours of interviews? These folks gave me a fucking interview "itenerary" which involved four sets of interviews over the course of four hours.
* I had an interview scheduled for 1 pm on 9-11 at a building very near the White House. I was printing out my resume for this interview shortly after the plane hit the Pentagon. It became obvious that my interview was cancelled and when I got downtown a few hours later, discovered that the block I was supposed to go to had been blocked off and had people patrolling it with machine guns. Needless to say, not only was our big protest cancelled, but there were few job opening for months after 9-11.
* I almost started crying as during one public library interview for a paraprofessional job because I knew I was vastly overqualified and that they would find a reason to not hire me.
* Most employers these days can't be bothered to send you a FOAD letter (FOAD = Fuck Off And Die). Several times I've found out that I didn't get a job when I saw the job re-advertised in the newspaper.
* I interviewed with the ACLU. Good interview. Then they get back to me three months later for the second interview. That one goes fine too. The fucks then never bothered to tell me that I didn't get the job. I found out that I didn't get it through alternative channels.
* Interviewed at NASA the Tuesday after the shuttle blew up last year.
* Had an interview at a guvmint contractor in Silver Spring for a generic librarian job in a special library. The person asks me if I would get bored doing the job, which was something I wasn't overqualified for or underqualified for. After the interview, some guy comes up to me on the street and offers to buy my artsy tie (which I think is bad luck now).
* Early in my career, had a phone interview for a university librarian job in Mississipi. Got asked if I would be able to "handle living in a southern state." Missed an opportunity to respond that it would be a problem if segregation were still in effect.
In any case, I gotten to scout out many buildings in DC because of all the interviews I've had.
Am I not employed yet?
Chuck