Job interviews can be filled with a ton of pressure.

Interviews are kind of like working up the guts to walk up and speak to a person in a bar who you find attractive... only 1,000,000 times worse!

If you get turned down in the bar, you may lose a little pride, your buddies might laugh at you a little (or a lot) and you may get slapped. But blowing a job interview has slightly more serious consequences... like not being able to afford to pay for goods and services.

By the way, asking "Do you use Windex on your jeans... because I can see myself in them" does not work in bars or job interviews... or pretty much anywhere in the universe.

Why I never! Windex is bad for the environment you scumbag!

I'm guessing we all have job interview horror stories. To be honest, mine is pretty tame.

I'm very lucky. I don't remember ever really embarrassing myself in any job interviews (whiskey will do that for you). I never really felt like I totally blew any interviews either. Although I didn't get every job, I always felt I had given it my best shot.

But there was one very awkward interview that I will never forget.

Shortly after earning my teaching license, like everyone else, I sent out a ton of resumes. For the jobs I really wanted, I personally dropped off a packet with my resume,letters of reference, a floppy disk (yes it was that long ago) and some samples of my work.

When one of my target high schools called me for an interview, I was thrilled!

Woo Hoo! Maybe I should have asked which school it was. D'oh!

Thirty seconds into the interview, I figured out that I was not going to "click" with the head of the Special Education department. She was twice my age (putting her at around 54... which I now realize is super young! Come on!) and a bit stiff. I'm kind of a goofball (big surprise) so I knew I might be in trouble.

This was confirmed when, right in the middle of the interview, she said four of my least favorite words in the English language:

"Let's do some role-playing."

Not that kind of role playing! Get your head out of the gutter!

I despise role-playing in classes, in-services and especially job interviews. I find this technique so fake, forced, and utterly useless.

I should have immediately picked up and left ... but I really wanted this job.

This 54 year old woman, dressed in an expensive business suit, proceeded to run her fingers through her hair in an attempt to mess up her perfectly hair-sprayed mane and said, "Pretend I'm a student refusing to work. Get me to work." She then proceeded to flop her head onto her very large and pricey desk.

I waited to see if she was kidding.

She was not.

I asked, "What is the student's name?" She did not respond. She was already too far into character. I tried to call a "time-out" and explained that if this were a real situation, I would have taken the time to learn things about the student such as her name, her interests, who her friends were, if she has any siblings, how she gets along with her parents, what motivates her, etc. You know... regular human being stuff.

The time-out was not awarded.

As I sat there stunned, I glanced over and noticed her name placard was followed by the initials P.H.D. As I looked back and forth between that placard and the top of her messy, gray hair covered head (which was still slumped on her desk), I had an epiphany. This woman and I were not going to get along.

I no longer even wanted this job. I figured since this was a fantasy, there were no rules.

I took a breath and responded, "Oh what do we have here? A leprechaun just rode in on a unicorn and sprinkled magic pixie dust that caused you to be inspired to do your work!"

Do you think this was designed to be creepy or it just happened naturally?

Doctor Whatsherface looked up.

I asked, "Did I get the job?"

No. No I did not.

Have you ever had a terrible or funny job interview? Please tell us about it in the comments below.

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