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PaperclipPerfector  20d ago (text post)   29774 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of March 17, 2025

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From what I've seen, "normal" jobs like big-company retail are even worse. They take thousands of candidates for tens of jobs, make them take various personality tests intended to tell if you have the proper attitude (the typical format has various questions where you answer from Strongly Agree, Agree, Neutral, Disagree, Strongly Disagree... and the correct answer is ALWAYS Strongly Agree or Strongly Disagree), then ghost all the losers.

I applied to one recently that had a long list of adjectives, like basically any adjective you could use to describe a person. There were hundreds, maybe a thousand, and you had to mark all the ones that describe you. From "industrious" and "punctual" to "gregarious" and "sanguine", it was ridiculous.

I'd be curious about the job. It almost functions as a test of some combination of IQ plus perseverance: if you mark all the good words, you get maximum points. You can do this faster if you're smarter, but can make up for it with enough perseverance. Not altogether unlike work itself.

Though, if I really wanted the job and had this as a step, I'd probably just write a script for it.

Yeah, I thought it was interesting too, I wavered on what they might be looking for. I thought maybe marking all the positive words would be a strike against me, so I only picked like a five or six kinda similar ones, like "industrious" and stuff. I didn't get the job, but I don't know why or what would have been better.

Going by the people I've known who want to work retail between getting a college degree and a serious job, Starbucks and Trader Joes are both fine with the trade off of higher turn over, but smarter, more interesting employees, and will give an immediate interview. Other companies don't necessarily respond at all. I suppose these are simply different business strategies?

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