The Creep Vibe

[Clodfobble]

Fun story I thought I'd share:

So this dude is interviewing at Mr. Clod's company. He's decent enough--Mr. Clod notes that he dresses a little too GQ for the company culture, and talked a little too much about his potential "management track" opportunities, but overall the guy gets moderate-to-solid "yes" votes from all the various managers interviewing him... except for the one female manager. She gives him the most emphatic "no" she can muster.

She explains, somewhat embarrassedly, that she can't point to anything egregious, but she nonetheless got a massive creep vibe from him. He only made eye contact with her male assistant while she was asking him questions, he manspread in the cafeteria to the point that she was forced to leave an empty seat between them... and her spidey sense was just blaring alarms the whole time. She acknowledges that this probably isn't a good enough reason to turn him down, but the other managers are supportive and say, hey, we've got this guy's resume, and all these companies are pretty incestuous--let's put out a few quiet feelers to see if anyone here knows someone who has worked with him in the past.

As it turns out, this includes a few former coworkers of Mr. Clod's. He avoids leading questions, just sends a basic, "Hey, did you ever work with Interview Guy back when you were with Big Company?" The response is immediate and fervent from all of them: do NOT hire this fucker. Most of the reasons fall along standard "serial harasser" lines, but other tales are outrageous to the point of illegality, like blackmailing a coworker with stolen naked pictures. One just replied, "There's only one question when it comes to hiring him. Does your company employ women? Then the answer is no."

Anyway, dude's obviously not getting hired. But the rest of the management team is now very glad they took the female manager's creep-radar into account, and while it will never be an uncorroborated deciding factor in anyone's hiring, they are strongly encouraging female interviewers to speak up again in the future when something just doesn't feel right.