Why should I hire you ?

Armed with two final quotations, I went in search of my manager to get the much needed 'Approval' in order to get my new baby toy's purchase-order in before the end of finanical year. My manager it seems, was in the middle of a phone interview at one of the smaller meeting rooms. I waved my quotations at the door of the 'Fish bowl' room and upon recognising the vendor's logo, she waved me in and motioned me to be quiet.

She was on speaker phone.

It turned out she was nearing the end of the interview. And I was just lucky enough to catch the last question.

"So.. give me some good reasons why I should hire you ?"

"I am cheap. I will do whatever you want. "

I crouched down to the floor and tried hard to control my laughter. I mentally stopped myself from rolling around the floor in an uncontrollable laughing fit. Not just because it was on speaker phone, but because I was in the goldfish bowl meeting room. It wouldn't look too good from the outside. On the otherhand, if someone did come in, I could just try to pretend to have an epileptic fit.

But anyway, it turned out I wasn't the only one trying not to laugh. When I did manage to compose myself and get up from the floor, my manager still had her head in her arms.

The phone interview pretty much ended there. Apparently the guy was a PhD student. (He was applying for a junior systems analyst role). And my manager was interested in interviewing him because his agent had stated that he was willing to take the job on less than the salary package on offer.

I think curiosity got the better of her.

That has got to be one of the worse answers I have ever heard of in a job interview.

For the record, my manager approved the quotation I had preferred for my new server. My new baby is going to be equipped with 20gb of RAM. Yay !!

I wonder how fast WoW will run on that. (Just kidding... I will never do such a thing...)

*Fish bowl room - is one of the smaller meeting room at work, which my colleagues and I refer to as the 'fish bowl' room, because it is entirely enclosed by glass walls. Leaving the person inside the room feeling like a fish in a fish bowl.