Air Quality

[Alert: This post includes ripped-straight-from-the-headlines drama. Some readers may benefit by skipping this week.]

We’ve had a bit of a theme the past week or so wherein I harp on the importance of interviews and you roll your eyes and skim past the soapbox before landing on the comedic story that serves to reinforce the topic at hand. Let’s recap, though: Interviews. Pretty important for getting a job. In fact, one would not get a job without some kind of an interview. Some, obviously, are a bit more in-depth than others, depending on the position being applied for, but I think we can all agree that the absolute lowest common denominator is that you need to show up. Showing up on time is best, but showing up at all is imperative.

[Sidebar: I continue to amaze myself at how fervently I continue to believe in this tenant, even as I am trained time and time again that relatively few people believe in the importance of showing up for interviews. Because I now have a warped view of mankind, mind you, I’m going to expect a damn job offer five minutes before the interview starts the next time I apply for a job and will be thoroughly flummoxed when someone expects me to speak and explain why I am qualified for the position in question. Crap. I’m stuck in this position forever. My boss will be thrilled.]

Although I am not required to give a courtesy call for each of those no-shows to find out what happened, I tend to end up hearing from the candidates at some point and therefore have heard just about every excuse in the book as to why someone couldn't make it to their interview. I even re-use some of them when I am running late to family potlucks, but that is a different blog.

Just recently, I had a client supervisor contact me to let me know a gentleman I had scheduled for an interview was a no-show. We had confirmed the interview details with the candidate the day before, and since he didn't reach out to let anyone know he was running late or lost or wouldn't be able to make it or whatever the case may be, I made a note in his file that he was a no-show, unreliable, and would not be considered in the near future should he decide to grace us with another application.

As I was making the entry in his file, the guy calls– at this point about an hour and a half after his scheduled interview time– to let us know he couldn't make it to the interview.

Why not?

The air quality was too poor for him to be able to go.

Now, mind you, we are not located in an area that regularly has poor air quality. Quite the opposite, in fact. I will grant that there are days when Canada is on fire and the smoke does affect the air quality, and maybe – maybe – the guy is one of the folks most impacted by air quality events. Fun fact, though: this was not one of those days. The East Coast was having problems. Not the Midwest.

Maybe he was looking at backdated issues of his local paper?

He asked for a reschedule. I said no. Air quality? Puh-lease. Kick rocks, dude.