Shouzer

Last Tuesday, I had the craziest interview of my life. I don’t want to mention the name of the company, but I will say that they are a defense contractor because it is integral to the story.

I walked into the interview, and the very first thing he did was grill me about my GPA. My GPA is not as good as it could be, but I’m certainly not ashamed of it either. The whole thing was very unnerving though, and it set a bad tone for the rest of the interview.

Later on in the interview, I started asking him questions. I wanted to know what the company ethic was like, so I asked him, “How do you feel morally about making ballistic missile control systems that could kill lots of people?”

Big mistake there. His eyes bugged out of his head, and he literally stared me down as he said, “I come from a soldiering family. My relatives are all soldiers and sailors. I feel that any time they are called upon to go to war they should have the best possible equipment. Their lives are an extremely high priority to me.”

I am not a peace activist or anything, but I’m just not sure I could handle the idea of working on such an offensive weapon. Anyway, there was no way I was going to work for these guys, so I sent him this email:

Dear Interested Potential Employer:
We appreciate your time and interest in providing an employment opportunity to J. Scott Parks. Unfortunately, at this time, we feel that you do not meet our employer criteria. We interviewed many applicants in the job search process and decided to pursue a company whose credentials and qualifications were better suited for our needs. Thus we will not be accepting your position, but thank you for your interest. If a need arises for us to contact you in the future, we will do so and you have our continued good wishes.
Very truly yours,
Scott Parks
Senior Electrical Engineer

Today, I had to go to a seminar for my senior design project, and the guys I was eating lunch with started talking about their experiences with this same guy. They had all been grilled about their GPAs, even the guy with a double degree who had a 3.77. (I would consider him to be in the top 5% of people at Rose in terms of smarts).

It also seems that he talked about me in all of his subsequent interviews. They all said that he mentioned interviewing an antiwar person earlier in the day, and he couldn’t understand why such a person would interview with a defense contractor. Clearly, it was a mistake on my part.