AIBU to find supermarket job interviews oddly demanding and irrelevant?

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I am a so called professional who has just had enough of one restructuring after another. I have handed my notice in.

I want a part-time job in a supermarket not as a manger but as a shop floor/warehouse worker.

Last month I had to do a psychometric test I kid you not, and was emailed to say I was through to the interview stage and I had to book an interview. All of the interview slots however had been taken in spite of the email only having been sent fifteen minutes before!

Having complained I was offered an interview but for a store a little further than I wanted.

There were three of us, we were given a little tour, then a group exercise, a small Functional skills test, then individual interview.

The questions:
Hobbies etc
One thing others would be surprised about me.
What would I do if I won the lottery.

Seriously, what bearing would these answers have on how I could do this job?

What would you say to the question about something someone would be surprised by me. I had absolutely no idea.

What answers would you have given?

What are they looking for? What answers do they want?

I had that, plus what would I cook them. I said I'd like to have the Pope, as none of us in the room would ever be in that position, and it would be a chance to ask lots of questions about their life. I'd cook him spaghetti bolognase, as it's the only half decent thing I could cook!
We had to do group things, like line up in the order of how long we'd take to get to work but we weren't allowed to speak.
I got the job.

For years now the successive governments have always said how they want to get people off benefits and into work.

If you make it almost impossible for people to get into these types of jobs, then they’ll never get into employment.

On the other side of the coin, employers are not charities.

I suppose an employer would say that no one has the automatic right to work for them , they have the right to choose how they recruit.

This is ringing a bell. I had a job interview for Asda when I was a student over 30 years ago. Even back then it was ridiculous and I didn’t even make it past the first stage.

I worked for Co op and luckily I got my job 18 years ago when a chat with the manager was all you needed. About 5 of us filled in an application about 5 years ago as a joke and we all failed.
We had a lady who had done a very stressful and responsible job for the nhs and wanted a change and she failed because one of the questions was something about what would you do in this particular situation (I forget what) and she said how she would deal with it, which made sense but she failed because they said she should have referred it to a manager. Ridiculous but luckily for us she came for a chat and our sensible manager wangled it so she got the job and she was an absolutely brilliant worker.

Some of the questions are ridiculous and as a retail manager myself i absolutely would not bother with them. I couldn’t care less what animal someone would be or who they want dinner with, I just want to know if they’re competent to do the job.

I do wish we could do the psychometric tests/ maths tests etc. it’s so frustrating to be called up to the checkouts because the operator cannot work out what 50% of a pound is or similar. As someone said earlier they are cutting management positions left right and centre in retail, we just don’t have time to be babysitting staff members as well unfortunately.

Hobbies etc
One thing others would be surprised about me.
What would I do if I won the lottery.

Yoga, reading, socialising, - you always have at least one thing that shows you can get on with people

That I’m petrified of butterflies - say how you overcome this (in my case, I’m sick!)

If it was a huge amount, as well as the usual holidays, help out DC, give to local charities or causes - of course everyone would do the holidays and the charity is cliched, but they aren’t looking for you to talk about investment portfolios

An interview for Sainsbury's. Started off as a group interview, then individual screen based hazard tests (like a driving hazard test) where you had to click a button everytime you saw a trip hazard. I failed.

A call centre. An ALL DAY group interview with activities like building bridges that you could roll a toy car over. If successful, you were called back for one to one interviews with phone role play.

A different call centre. Again, an ALL DAY group interview where you were whittled down at midday into smaller groups, one activity was agreeing how important different objects would be if you were shipwrecked on an island. If you passed the whole day, you were invited back to a one hour interview.

I forgot… before I went to ASDA that I’ve already posted about, I failed the online personality test for Pizza Hut and didn’t even make it to interview.

The best uni Christmas job I had was Bear Factory (when it was owned by Hamleys). They literally gave me a trial on the stuffing machine and asked me when I could start!

Im not laughing at you but I can't believe they told you, you failed a personality test 🤣🤣

Google the questions and suggestions will come up.

Personally I think they're stupid questions as they have zero correlation to what the roles require.

Stupid questions deserve ridiculous answers. Also these supermarkets deserve public ridicule and approbation for making people go through it.

yes I went for a shelf stacking job as Asda about 15 years ago I had to participate in a group activity where we had to build a bridge using Asda spaghetti and marshmallows. And I definitely remember the animal question. I probably said giraffe and made up something about looking over people. I got the job. I was similar to you, leaving a stressful job for an easier one. I was bored rigid shelf stacking and I kept running my toes over the big metal carts we had to lug about. I lasted 6 months then got a job in a pub instead. I did that for about a year before going back to my stressy job which I then got promoted but ended up having burnout and left. I now work in a customer service role I love.

I am surprised by this whole thing tbh. The staff at my local Asda are absolutely shocking.

They really dont.
How i interact with people in a wholly artificial interaction in an interview situations has nothing to do with how I would interact in real life doing a job

Hobbies - walking around the local park, reading, TikTok, swimming, is having my grandchildren a hobby but I enjoy them
Surprise you about me- very calm exterior, with imposter syndrome. Been held up in an armed robbery, managed to report it to the police whilst ongoing.
what would I do if I won the lottery I’d say well I have but I’m not telling a soul and then wink

This sort of crap really pisses me off.

I swear a lot of it is managers and HR people on a power trip, and justifying their own jobs by inventing ridiculous hurdles to jump through. It's a big stinking pile of BS and I cannot wait until I don't have to participate in their silly games ever again.

From those answers
yoga. Your mindful disciplined and controlled the type of person who’s calm and doesn’t flap
lottery Your loyal dependable family oriented and reliable

just a guess but are any of these right

for a customer service job they make you a good fit

"They are looking for honest, genuine, friendly, approachable team players that are willing to tackle a task, that will ask questions to understand what's expected."
As nice as this would make our shopping experiences, I'm pretty sure what the over-involved psychometric testing is trying to do is filter out the light fingered applicants.
Clerks and shelf stackers don't need sparkly interpersonal skills but supermarkets can loose alot to staff that help themselves, particularly if they're smart about it.
I suspect the dishonesty-detecting aspect of the tests and questions is pseudo-science but the management consultants talk a good game.

when my daughter was doing her degree (commuting from home) she applied for a job at our local supermarket. The hours advertised were daytime hours. At the interview, along with stupid questions and tasks, they asked if she could work during the night as that was required. She said not. Unsurprisingly she didn’t get the stupid job. (she got a better one)

the pot wash “ interview” sounds like they were just after regular free labour. Lots of places around here do that. I genuinely believe they have no intention of giving anyone a job: they want free labour!

This is crazy. I’ve never worked in a supermarket but did work in clothing stores, bars and Greggs when I was a student. Those interviews were basic as anything, it was difficult not to get the job in truth. I remember being asked what my favourite Greggs item was…

DH went for a ‘professional’ role once and was asked which football team he supported. He swears he didn’t get the role because he answered Leeds United!

Supermarket shelf filling interviews are ridiculous. I went for one and was given that ‘star’ question, which I had no idea about. I didn’t get the job, despite already working at one of their branches as an agency worker for the last year. The star question was pointless when they could have just checked with my branch what kind of worker I was or asked direct questions about my work day. Instead he had a sheet of paper in front of him with a tick list of questions as if I’d gone for a management position. They’d have seen on my CV that I was already working for them. I worked for years in offices and couldn’t even get a supermarket job, demoralising.

I guess those questions show whether you can think on your feet and whether you're the type of person who'd be thrown off balance by unexpectedly being asked questions by customers or manage the random Smalltalk expected of supermarket cashiers. It's probably also meant to indicate whether you have the people skills to get on with colleagues.

Something other people would be surprised about is just looking for one of those random humourous curiosities which is overall positive - obviously not something that makes you look as though you might behave unpredictably. They just want something like having an unusually large number of siblings, speaking an unexpected second or third language - but to be honest even a parlour trick like being able to say goodbye in multiple languages, having once had an unusual summer job as a teenager, having studied something unusual, playing a musical instrument that people might not expect... It can even be that you had a Mohawk when you were 19 or something, it's just to show you can respond to an unexpected question and seem vaguely interesting.

Obviously this kind of interview doesn't actually work - I'm bizzarly good at this type of interview (in my job it's not unusual at the beginning or end of a longer interview about the professional elements of the job) but actually loathe Smalltalk. Plenty of others are terrible at being interviewed but actually enjoy real life Smalltalk.

It's not a very effective way to choose employees (skills tests are better) but it's easy to prepare stock answers once you know what might be asked, and interviews are cheaper to run than skills tests.

I thankfully will never have to interview again. I have a part time cleaning job I got through an agency, no interview just a quick casual phone chat. It’s the perfect job for me at my age, no commute, work alone, home by 10.00am. I’m staying till I fully retire. I still get admin jobs popping up on Indeed but can’t face the interviews.

I was once asked how my friends describe me. My answer: Well I am the best thing since sliced bread! (I did get the job)
I think these questions are designed to find out about your personality.

Another stupid one was: Tell me something we don't know about you - it was for a promotion und I have been working with these people for the last 4 years! In other words they did know everything I wanted to share in the workplace about me.