Some time ago, in a place I won’t mention doing a job I’d rather forget, I had to do interviews.

I always found them rather uncomfortable as the person sitting across from you is obviously lying through their teeth about how enthusiastic they are about the job you’re interviewing them for, their achievements, their skills and qualifications. I suppose it comes down to who is the most convincing liar.

When I first started doing them I felt a bit sorry for people who were desperately looking for work so you’d let your feelings enter into the equation a bit. That is a mistake and as soon as I’d hired Mad Trevor I knew I was in trouble. His name should have given me a clue.

His first day at work was another clue. Whereas in the interview he brushed up well with a shirt, tie and some comfortable slacks he arrived at 9am that Monday morning wearing black everything and sporting a shoulder to floor black leather coat. He would talk about weapons of all kinds and had a rather unfortunate habit of being extremely rude to the customers. I had to ‘discipline’ him and if I’d had known then what I know now I’d have brought a spade and caved the back of his head in rather than just giving him the stern ticking off and the written warnings that those fucking cunts in SIPTU say is appropriate.

Well, I thought it had gone fine until the next day when he came into work with a sword. He didn’t brandish it around or do fencing moves or anything but it put everyone on edge as he kept it by his side. Now, someone thought it would be a good idea to call security to sort him out only they forgot that ‘security’ consisted of an old bloke called Arthur who more or less checked that everyone had their name badges when they arrived.

“Now, I reckon you want to go home with that sword”, he said to yer man. “And in the future don’t bring any swords, cutlasses, scimitars, rapiers or sabres to work.”

“NOBODY TELLS ME WHAT TO DO!”, shouts yer man jumping up and unleashing his sword to air. He swung it around his head and chopped his keyboard in half. Panic, I have to admit, ensued. People ran screaming and shouting and out the doors and soon I was left on my own with him.

“I quit”, he said.

“Probably not a bad idea”, I said. “Fancy a smoke?”

“Aye.”

We smoked until the Gardai came and I never saw him again. That experience certainly put me in a better frame of mind for choosing future candidates.

Another time this lad came for an interview so obviously stoned off his face it was hilarious. He had been a bar manager in Amsterdam and I’m not sure if he was stoned on the day or if it was just the long term effects of working in Holland. Anyway, nice bloke, good sense of humour, didn’t look like the type to Samurai during work and quite obviously whacked out of his face. I appreciated that because I was doing the interview exactly the same.

When he left the woman from HR turned around to me and said “Well, he was nice but do you think he …erm… might have been stoned?”

“Not at all”, I said revelling in the delicious, hash filled irony.

I gave him the job and he turned out to be a good bloke unlike Depressed Derek who obviously took two E before he came to the inteview as he was jolly, chatty, smiley and generally an infectious character. Once he started work though he was a fucking misery, always moaning and taking days off because he had ‘personal problems’ and suffered from something he called ‘clinical depression’.

Naturally I didn’t believe a word of it. Until he threw himself under a DART at Tara Street station.

I don’t do interviews any more. I prefer interrogations.