Then don't ask any question about marital status or number of kids.

What if you feel your employment model is a better fit for single employees? What if you feel it is a better fit for married employees?

So question 4 is easy. I always ask, do you have a passport and are you able to travel internationally should the need arise?

I always ask what hobbies a candidate has. If they have kids, this is where this comes out. Usually, they let you know if they have a spouse at this point and I never even had to ask.

The last one is easy too. How much notice do you need to give your current employer? How did you get your last job? The answer to these questions provides insight into question 5.

Gold Star for Billy!

Mr H, just because you don't like an answer does not make it pathetic.

There are plenty of questions you can ask, and I have the ability to judge people fairly well. If you put someone at ease, you can get them talking. Get them talking and if you listen to what they say, you can learn a lot.

In my line of work, it would not be hard at all to avoid a person who would run out and beat someone's ass. I am sure it would be much more difficult hiring someone at a fried chicken place in the hood, which of course is an SEP* type of situation.






*Somebody Else's Problem

My apologies - a poor choice of words. I should have just said it was a "non-answer". Merely responding to a question does not mean you answered it. There is a big, big difference. For example, if I ask you what the square root of 36 is and you answer "blue", you have responded, but not answered. That is essentially what you did. It's not a matter of whether I like the "answer" or not, it's more a matter of whether it was, indeed, an "answer".

Of course you do. I'm sure the hiring manager at this Popeye's has the same high opinion of his own abilities. The vast majority of the time, you get to congratulate yourself that you were "right". But that is only because this sort of an aberration is so extremely rare. So rare, that there is literally nothing you can do about it if it happens with someone you have hired. There is no predicting it. There is no planning for it. There is no training, no company policy - nothing - that will stop it when the one in a couple hundred million snaps like this.

Of course. You hire trained, educated professionals. You are hiring from an entirely different pool. As such, the chances of you hiring such a thug are greatly diminished, if not entirely eliminated. That's all well and good, but it has less than nothing to do with this situation.

And, *sigh* - you still have offered nothing in the way of a workable answer - real world solutions that could be applied by companies like Popeye's to ensure this never happens again. "Don't hire thugs" is a lofty platitude, but it really does nothing as far as providing a roadmap of any kind to achieve that goal.

The incredible shrinking labor pool caused us to modify our interview questions:

Sample questions:

"How many grams can you do per day and still be able to do the work?"

"Will your dealer chase you to the jobsite?"

"Are any of those warrants for assault? Murder?"

Gosh, I miss it.

There doesn't have to be a solution that guarantees all future body slams will not happen, but an employer has to do whatever they can to ensure the most obvious problems are preempted.


like not running a late evening shift with only unsupervised 16 year olds
or making sure everybody customer facing has had minimum required training...
and not have em watch just watch a video training while they sit on their phone...

Making sure there is a hierarchy, and that there is always somebody who you positively trust to be responsible, somebody that you know will take charge and deescalate. (or call in assistance if things threaten to get out of hand)

due diligence . common sense, These are not things that are unheard off in any kind of business with employees.
Big companies have to organised it better , have a plan, do it, and document that they did it.
upper levels should monitor lower levels that they did.

Yup, actually I did. They put in the automated kiosks for ordering.

These don’t make mistakes, are incapable of assaulting customers, don’t get offended by mere name calling, and don’t have to miss work for court dates or parole meetings.

I think this may be the solution in places where thugs make up the vast majority of the eligible minimum wage work force. I too would rather deal with a person than an automated teller, but I’d rather deal with an automated teller than a stupid person, or worse yet someone who would escalate an error in a transaction into a brutal assault.

Fast food employees are rarely the top of the class bright people. We stopped a an fast food place on the road trip back from Arkansas. We made our order and sat down to wait, and the table of ladies in the 70s next to us received wrong orders for two of the ladies. We had a very simple order for the 4 of us, and they missed one of them. It was no major deal, but it shows us just how poorly rained, or un-trainable some people are.

No stabbings were involved. We ate and got back on the road.

When we hired people at a former job I had we told everyone they are on a 2 weeks probation, and can be let go for any reason in those two weeks. More than a few never made it to 2 weeks. We were not in business to deal with the problems of people that have been making really bad decisions all their life.

It also helped that in Oklahoma all employees are At Will employees. We could fire anyone at any time for anything.

I worked at Wendy's in high school. I don't remember there being any thug employees at all. We were mostly high school kids just making extra money. The only people I knew who needed that money to live were the managers, who were all much older than us worker bees. The folks I'd assume were doomed to a life of min. wage, menial jobs would be people over the age of about 25 who were still working fast food. If you're a teenager, it's perfectly acceptable to work a job like that. Oh, the other employees older than us who weren't managers were females inmates on work release from the local women's prison.

What if you feel it is a better fit for white employees? Or male employees? Or straight employees? Or Christian employees? Or employees under 50?

1965 just called; they want their minumum-wage rationalization back.

While employers may not be allowed to ask a lot of those protected class questions, the federal gov't. can and does ask them by making most employers also collect that information under the guise of doing so for federal compliance. In fact, every online job app I have filled out in the last 15 years asked my race, ethnicity, if I was disabled and if I was a veteran. Scratch that - those online apps were accompanied by federal questionnaires that asked those questions. So, while the employer wasn't asking, they collected the info for the feds and obviously could read it and, legal or not, use it in their decision-making process.

I often have to remind my wife when we stop at a fast food restaurant while traveling that these people work at they places for a reason. They probably can't do better. This is where they work because they have to. They're not PHD material. They are not in med school or law school. When they mess up our order it is almost to be expected. I really want them working here and not in a hospital.

I disagree that all fast food employees are low brow knuckle dragging thugs . Example is Chick Fil A . Not sure what their screening process is but the restaurants I have been in have always had a great staff to deal with . Friendly/courteous and willing to help with the smallest detail . Maybe they are a true exception but they are doing something right in their hiring and training that others do not .

Should companies be allowed to keep data-bases on people at all?
That potential for price-fixing and discrimination is already out of the box, and currently drives big business cyber-stalking..

When I went to the dentist, they couldn't do any work because my x-rays (stored on Amazon servers) was down that day.

Google is also keeping medical records:
https://www.wsj.com/articles/google-s-secret-project-nightingale-gathers-personal-health-data-on-millions-of-americans-11573496790?shareToken=st98ed7303aedb45d281bc0bda0 2eb90b4
Search giant is amassing health records from Ascension facilities in 21 states; patients not yet informed

Tech giants like Amazon and Apple are expanding their businesses to include electronic health records -- which contain data on diagnoses, prescriptions and other medical information. That’s creating both opportunities and spurring privacy concerns.

I made double the min. wage when I worked at Wendy's in 1987-88. Our town had negative unemployment. I was rich back then! No bills, no rent, Mom and Dad covered food when I wasn't at work, I ate for free when at work, nothing to spend my money on but guitars and girls. For my car, NJ had some weird law on school busing, so I got paid $2-3 per passenger, per trip to/from school. Between taking myself, my sister and her friend to/from our private school, the reimbursement from the state more than covered all my gas and insurance. Man, those were the days.

Chick Fil A around here work hard to have the kids working there look presentable, and act pleasant. They have never messed up my order. I don't go very often because it is always hard to find a place to park and the drive through is two cars wide and 20 cars long. They move a lot of food through.

One of my wife's nephews worked there from the time he was 15 to the day he went off to College. He was always on time, and had the right attitude, more work = more money, and raises. He was making dang good money for a teenager and had saved a nice chunk to start college with.

I would think that part of Chick Fil A's success is due to the fact the "owner" must work in the place of business. You can find the "owner" working the counter. The "owner" spends significant time training in an existing store before taking over his own place.