Do You Have Any Questions?

[msconduct]

The ghastly interview question used to be "See this pen? Sell it to me?", but that's now out of fashion. The hot new torture is apparently to ask interviewees why manhole covers are round.

Lucky I'm self-employed, because I'd never get the job. The answer they're looking for is that with a square cover there's a risk of it falling through and crushing a hapless sewer worker (and their lives are bad enough already).

I would have said "Because manholes are round".

Comments

[badasstronaut.livejournal.com]

You could always inform them they're not called "manholes" anymore.

[frowningman.livejournal.com]

You'd have got that double-wrong because most manholes in NZ aren't round, nor are their covers.

I'm still not forgiving anybody for "you've tried everything you can think of to solve a problem, what do you do next?". I know the expected answer, now, but that answer fits into the "everything I can think of" category, so it's already been ruled out in the question. There is no answer to that question. Even "give up" is something I might have thought of, and if it wasn't then I couldn't even do that.

[isaacfreeman.livejournal.com]

The answer they're looking for is that with a square cover there's a risk of it falling through and crushing a hapless sewer worker (and their lives are bad enough already).

Also, they're heavy, and making them round means you can roll them to where you need them.