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Craig had been an IT manager at an immigration services company for several years, but was ready to move on. And for good reason- Craig had suffered his share of moronic helldesk nonsense and was ready to let someone else deal with it. This meant participating in interviews for his replacement.
Craig had given a rather generous three months notice, and very quickly the remaining three months were taken up with interviewing possible replacements. Each interview followed the same basic pattern: Craig would greet the candidate, escort them down to the fish-bowl style conference room in the center of the office, where a panel of interviewers ran through a mix of behavioral and technical questions. The interviews were consistently disappointing, and so they'd move on to the next candidate, hoping for an improvement.
After the first few interviews, he started making up questions about potentially horrible IT related disasters. "You see an executive using scissors to cut the Ethernet cable. When pressed, they explain that they want their connection to be wireless. What do you do?" "It's the holiday season, and you see someone trying to extend Christmas lights in the break room using a suicide cable, what do you do?" "You discover one of the technicians has been hiding a bottle of whiskey in the server room. What do you do?"
This kept Craig entertained, but didn't get them any closer to hiring any of these candidates.
One day, they brought in another candidate, and Craig ran the standard interview. His mind wasn't really on the interview- the candidate's resume wasn't the best they'd seen, and it took only a few minutes to establish that they probably weren't the best fit for the role. So Craig spent the time thinking more about whatever absurd question he was going to ask than what was going on in front of him.
His mind drifted off, and his eyes wandered around the office. They strayed to the corner office, also fishbowl style, where the CEO sat. And that's when Craig realized he wasn't going to need to make anything up for today's interview.
"What would you do if you saw a member of staff washing their keyboard with Evian mineral water, while sitting at their desk, their computer still on and keyboard still plugged in?"
The candidate was bemused, and just sat silently. For a long beat, they just watched Craig. Craig, obligingly, pointed back to the CEO's office, where the CEO was in the process of doing exactly what Craig had described.
The candidate took in the scene. Saw the placard announcing that as the CEO's office. Saw not just one, but two open bottles of Evian. Saw the water spreading everywhere, as the CEO hadn't considered things like "have some paper towels on hand".
The candidate turned back to Craig, and eloquently shrugged. There was a world-weariness in the shrug, that spoke to long experience with situations like this. It was the shrug of an IT manager that was going to keep a healthy stock of replacement keyboards, and never ever let the CEO have a laptop.
In the end, it was that candidate who got the job, not because they had the best interview, or the best resume, but because they knew what they were getting in to, and were ready to deal with it.
The keyboard, however, wasn't so lucky. "How else was I supposed to get the breadcrumbs out of it?" the CEO asked while Craig replaced the keyboard.