AIBU to find supermarket job interviews oddly demanding and irrelevant?

[Unlisted]

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?

@Unlisted did you get the job?

I was supposed to be called late afternoon/early evening on the 29th. It’s now the 1st and I still have heard.

So I doubt it somehow.

I’ve encouraged my son to use nepotism via his dad. If you’ve got it in your arsenal you might as well use it in today’s job market. No 100% guarantee, but it’s worth him giving it a go.

They clearly feel character, personality and the ability to engage in conversation and respond to unexpected questions are important to the role and designed questions around those things. Your professional qualifications are obviously irrelevant and presumably its a starter role with full training, so they weren't interested in pre existing skills, and were recruiting potential (as demonstrated by the test and interview conduct) rather than existing competence.

Oh god! Not that we contact you by x days, by the end of the week, regardless of the outcome BS.

Its insulting that potential employers don’t make any effort to contact the candidates

I went for an interview for a part-time beep beeping on the checkout job at Asda when I was a student. The interview lasted a day and one of the things we had to do was build a house of cards. I kid you not.

There are currently so many people applying for these jobs at present that they use these ludicrous tests to filter the number of applicants and get them down to manageable levels for interview. For a public facing role its important that applicants have the right interpersonal skills and attitude because they reflect upon the company. No one wantes to go into the supermarket and be confronted by rude impatient staff who do not care whether they find what they want.

Stupid question list- what would I do with olive oil? Answer to that one- give it to dh as he does all the cooking!
Can you cook sausages with olive oil, answer-I don't know, dh does all the cooking. I did ask over the headsets to check that you could cook sausages with it to be fair.
I'm in the car park wrangling trolleys. A lady stopped me and said she wanted to buy toilet rolls. I'm in the car park! There was a long discussion regarding the toilet roll quality, what could I do about it? Suggested she went to the desk, the fuck off big desk with "help desk" on it just inside the door, she said was I sure there was a desk there.

Exactly plus working with the general public is hard the majority are nice but some are just nasty or creepy.

Me too, but sometimes you have to be normal in job interviews 😂

They're watching ypur people skills, your patience, problem solving etc.
It's not about just the cards.

I find the supermarkets still employ the CBA students. They hated working with the public.

Yet had some lovely chatty students

The latter is growing, unfortunately. The lovely customers, are literally, a dying breed.

Enjoyed working whilst these lovely customers were about. Then didn’t see them for a few weeks. To discover that they died in their sleep or one particularly lovely customer, got knocked down by a car driving through the crossing at 80mph through a red light. Died of her injuries.

Yet the Misogs (miserable old gits) and Moamins (moaning old Minnies) kept going. They were never happy and moaned about anything and everything. I was so tempted to say to them - is there anything you enjoy or like?

I did say to a bloke and whats wrong this week 🤣🤣

They act like your holding a gun to their head to make them shop there. Its like the customers who tell you thats much cheaper in aldi. Well buy it from aldi then why you telling me. I had a customer come in once with an aldi receipt and wanted me to stand there with him why he went through every item telling me how much cheaper each item was compared to this shop

The lottery question is a bit of a trick one. Do they expect you to say that despite now being a multimillionaire, you'd obviously keep working in the supermarket because you're just so passionate about retail?

If you said that then they would know your a liar its a good way to weed out the bullshitters