OP can report back on what the bar was, but I doubt people were getting rejected simply for being aloof or untalkative. And it's unfair in the opposite direction to try to apply the "Magical Negro" trope to anyone with a blue-collar job. By that bar -- it would be better to completely ignore the driver and treat them as a nonentity, which we (hopefully) know is wrong.
Use whatever resources are at your disposal to vet candidates.
This story is supposedly about an actual taxi driver, not a plant from HR. It's absurd to trust this person like this.
> It's absurd to trust this person like this
If your friend told you "man, my last customer was a jerk" you would distrust that?
If a homophobe was working for HR (in 2022) they would hide it, even to the extent of making sure to hire some percentage gays no matter what they thought personally.
> If your friend told you "man, my last customer was a jerk" you would distrust that?
My personal friend? That's the standard we're expecting from a giant corporation's bureaucracy? It just has its personal friends that it trusts.
That kind of thing is just gross, is my point. Maybe it's how everything works, welcome to the real world, etc. But it's nothing to be praised or admired.
The corporation should vet its "personal friends" at least as closely as its official HR personnel. Otherwise they're an unaccountable source of bias in the hiring process.
Observing how people behave around nominal subordinates is not a new trick or one that is gross. It's an interesting data point. This is unusual as rather than a receptionist or security guard, it is someone who doesn't work for the company.
That you think it's impossible to trust someone without formal vetting is really interesting to me. It suggests that formal vetting by Big Corps is useful but knowing someone from a significant number of interactions/conversations is worthless. I don't buy into that at all, I'd argue pretty strongly the inverse is true and vetting is garbage and interpersonal interactions are useful.
A similar way is to take the candidate out and see how they deal with the waiter.
sounds like both
what do you mean when you say "Maybe the powerless person is a homophobe" ?
> what do you mean when you say "Maybe the powerless person is a homophobe" ?
The taxi driver may cause conflict with gay passengers. Or female passengers, or whatever else. Then they would blame their own victim for their reaction. The taxi driver's personal biases and animosities would become a vector for corporate discrimination.
There is a reason that corporate bureaucracies take such care to look out for this kind of thing. If you let ordinary people just go with their gut on things, you end up excluding a lot of people based on stereotypes and bias. It's not some theoretical possibility, but empirical fact.
But what if this taxi driver really did toss around the interviewee's expensive luggage, with his best interview clothes and perhaps some materials or documents for an important interview the next day? Does the taxi driver report back, yea he got upset, but it was my fault? What if the interviewee just got off a long flight, wants to rest up for the interview, and isn't really up for chatting with a taxi driver? Does the taxi driver report back that he was rude, wouldn't talk?
I will agree that if the person is a total rageaholic nutcase, passing that info along to the company is valuable information. But reporting on anything else -- asking the driver to keep quiet, requesting he take better care of luggage, asking for a specific route, turning down the radio, whatever -- I'd be more suspicious that the driver is a nuisance than the interviewee has character flaws.
This subthread is really getting absurd. It's a perfectly good test to hear whether a candidate mistreated someone who they might perceive to be beneath them, and only severely asocial nerds would interpret Op's anecdote as if they put this taxi driver into the CI/CD pipeline to pass/fail candidates.
It's an urban legend, a tired old trope of "gotcha!" style human observation that today is commonly used on the bottom-of-the-barrel TV talk shows like Maury Povich. The "absurd" part is that despite the tons of comments here, you haven't realized that yet. Lol.
i wonder which of your demographics predisposes you to judge such people in this way?
"Latin America offers a contradictory narrative: The region has the highest rates of violence against the LGBT community, according to research done by Transgender Europe, a non-governmental organization, but it also has some of the most progressive laws for LGBT equality and protection."
It seems like a pretty intuitive step to me to go from "Highest rate of hate crimes" to "more likely to be homophobic".
1 - https://www.cnn.com/2017/02/26/americas/lgbt-rights-in-the-a...
This actually happened in my workplace, I recognised a coworker as gay long before he told me, just from his vocabulary.
Also, wouldn't the taxi driver also have to know about these clues?
With all respect, I think the scenario "Taxi driver planted/used as an interview prescreen is openly anti-gay and sniffs them out." is a bit contrived.
In this case just knowing the driver well enough to ask them "Was that person nice to you?" when they drop a candidate off gets you another very useful signal when the response isn't neutral. A lot of the time it'll be "they were OK", but occasionally you'll get a positive "they treated me like a human being" or a negative "no, they were rude".
If you just get an "OK" then you're back to hiring as normal, without the extra data. If you get a positive or negative signal that can amplify what you see in the rest of the hiring process. For me, a tick in the "nice to people you don't have to be nice to" box is a good thing. I like to work with people who have that trait. If I can find a signal that indicates a person has it then I'm going to use it when I'm hiring.
That's the whole range eh?
Sure. Everyone should be sad about that. There are plenty of people out there who don't have any willingness to treat people in service jobs like driving a taxi with any sort of humanity. Too many people will just ignore the fact that these people are living, breathing human beings with feelings of their own, and treat them as if either they don't exist, or that they exist to serve them. It's quite appalling.
Treating someone like a human being means having kindness, respect, and empathy for them. It means not expecting them to demean themselves just because you're paying them to do something. It's treating them well even without knowing them.
It's quite a high bar apparently, and a lot of people out there don't manage it.
It's not a high bar. There's just a surprising number of people that are really good at playing limbo.
Missed this first half of the sentence.
- They were OK
- They treated me like a human being
- They were rude
There's no room for "We had an interesting conversation" or "They gave me some good advice" or "I think I made a new friend"? Not even "They seemed like a good person"?
The maximum is "They treated me like a human being" which is somehow above "They were OK"?
My original point, however, was to highlight the fact that "They treated me like a human being" was given as the example of a positive interaction.
Which is absolutely absurd. And I don't think I'm taking that too literally.
I get the impression everything was relatively informal in the process they described. In forums like these, it's about looking at the spirit of what they were trying to say and get across.
2. Have you interacted with many human beings?
We'd all love it if being treated as a human being were the bare minimum, but quite a few people didn't get the memo and fall quite a bit below it. You really do want to filter out those folks in your hiring process. Unfortunately, here on HN, some commenters view any sort of hiring filter, much less one like "don't be an asshole", as a personal attack.
2. Yeah... You're not wrong.
I have an admin, and people who treat her poorly pop up all of the time. She’s a trusted person who can wield whatever authority I have in many scenarios. Treating her poorly is rude and gross, but also self-destructive (hint: who actually manages the budget?). Plus, she won’t be an admin forever, and it’s a small world.
I worked in retail sales in college and encountered all sorts of people. You get a sense of people when you work with the public. When somebody chooses to exert power over someone where that person lacks agency to respond, that’s a character trait worthy of future consideration.
I've heard the comment multiple times that everyone should work in a restaurant at least once in their lives so they have a better understanding of what the employees go through. I tend to agree, and I would probably add retail in there as well.
I was a motorcycle mechanic for six years before going to college. Some customers where a joy, you looked forward to seeing them, most were just average Joes that needed work done, and a very small few were arrogant self entitled jerks, but it was a job, and you had to deal with it.
Some of the nicest people I know have had retail experience in their life.
Need new batteries for my pager? Done! Would like some updated business cards? Done! My desk phone needs replacing. Done!
The comments above talk about punishment for bad behavior, which happens all day every day. Nobody cares about giving the candidate a 'fair shake' because if you know and trust someone enough to listen to their opinion then "hard pass" is all you need to hear. You've decided the taxi driver was savvy enough to make this call long before this specific incident.
Of course it's not an instant reward like it is for children but good behavior is one of the things I can point to that led me to be in the position I am now.
The last two thirds of my so far 38 (next month!) year career have been "call Doug, he knows this particular topic and he is a great team player". Most of those from people I never worked with, but they were asking friends for recommendations.
So yeah, good behavior has fueled the two thirds of my career where I earned about eighty percent of my income.
So yeah, my experience lines up with yours.
Not true! Yesterday I walked out of a Home Depot with an unpaid drill bit in my shirt pocket (my hands were full). I discovered my error when I reached the car. I went back to pay, and got a 20% discount for being honest!
An (absolute, not relative) reward for good behavior — i.e. a positive-ROI outcome for doing the right thing, vs. not doing the right thing — would be, for example, if you came back and told them you didn't pay, and so they gave you the drill bit for free and also gave you a nickel. Any less and it'd just be "no reward, no punishment."
To be clear, theft isn't theft (legally or ethically) without mens rea — if you accidentally walk out of a store with something, you haven't done anything wrong.
And if you later realize you now have possession of the thing, that doesn't mean you're suddenly guilty of theft, either. Theft is an act requiring mens rea, not a state of someone who possesses something that was at some point illegitimately dispossessed from its owner. (If the latter was true, then most people who buy anything from pawn shops would be guilty of theft, because those things were often stolen from someone at some point.)
You might, separately, see there being positive ethical value in returning an item to its owner; but this ethical value should be considered independently from the ethical cost of having stolen (or not stolen) the thing. If you think there's positive ethical value in returning things to their owners, then you'd likely feel an ethical impoetus to e.g. "steal" stolen bicycles from those piles you see on the front yards of flop houses, and bring them back to the people who own them. (Even though those people have probably bought new bicycles already, and won't know what to do with the returned ones. Even though the stolen pile of bicycles is likely just a pile of rust due to lack of maintenance.)
What if, instead of the same day, it had been the next day when you noticed you now had the drill bit, long after you brought it home? Would you still think you had an imperative to return it? Would it still feel like deliberate theft?
How about if you didn't notice that you had it, and it fell out of your pocket at some point on your way home, and then you realized the next day that that had happened? Would you feel an ethical wrongness that could only be righted by retracing your steps to find the store's lost drill bit, so it could be returned? Or would you accept this as just a series of accidents with neutral ethical value — like e.g. goods being damaged in shipping?
What if, instead of a drill bit, you found after you walked out of the store that you had a $5 bill stuck to your shoe? Would you feel the need to walk back inside and ask who lost the $5 bill?
When a salesman gives you a squeeze ball or a bottle of scotch, it’s not a “bribe”. It’s an artifact that provides an excuse to talk, and perhaps anchor the conversation positively.
Likewise, the store policy of providing a discount is intended leave you with a positive memory that reinforces your action.
“Wow. I made a mistake, caught it, and the nice lady at the counter thanked me and gave me a discount.” That’s a powerful feeling.
There are plenty of "asshole filters" around https://cafebedouin.org/2019/11/10/the-asshole-filter/
That would be indeed implausible. But not every transaction happens between undeferentiated cogs.
A specific person organises the interview logistics from the company. Let’s call him Joe. When they agree with a candidate on an interview date Joe picks up the phone and calls the hotel to book a room. After that Joe calls George the trusted taxi driver they always work with. He lets him know who needs the ride and when. They exchange pleasantries. George also lets him know that the one on Monday cussed him out when he thought George was not driving fast enough. Joe laughs, and tells George that that’s crazy since he is always on time if not early. George feels good about that. He likes that Joe noticed that he is always punctual. They say good byes . Joe makes a mental note to not hire the cussing candidate.
What is implausible about this?
> How frequently are people so rude to the taxi driver that they are disqualified from consideration?
Have you met people? Happens all the time.
> Does the taxi driver get compensated?
Yes. He receives a steady supply of rides and the company pays him for that.
> Why is the taxi driver doing this?
He is a human being and those in general don’t like it when someone mistreats them. They let others know when it happens.
> Does anybody vet the taxi driver's personality testing ability?
Yes. It is called a personal connection. The driver behaves like a decent human being and only rarely say that someone was rude to them so the hiring manager believes them when it happens.
I think the reason you find this story implausible is because you are thinking on a different scale. A team of hiring managers managing 500 interviews per week for a megacorp can’t do this. They won’t have the mental bandwidth, they won’t use a specific driver, they won’t have the personal connection. Not every company is that size. Some company might only interview a few people a week.
It's also bizarre to me that the company would have a "trusted taxi driver". A trusted driver for executives or something might make sense, but a trusted driver who isn't employed by your organization that you specifically route candidates through? It just doesn't sound like the type of thing that happens much to me.
Finally, on the subject of people being randomly rude to taxi drivers, never having been a taxi driver I don't have real first hand information. I did ride a public city bus multiple times a day for years though and the number of people who I witnessed being rude to the driver, who were not visibly drunk or homeless, is zero. It just doesn't fit with my experience of humanity to think that, in a typical daytime taxi ride you're going to get much absurdly inappropriate behavior - i.e behavior that would rise to the level of disqualifying the candidate. Maybe if the taxi driver were a woman I'd believe it, but I bet the vast majority of people would just say where they wanted to go and little else.
Many years ago, in the days before Uber and Lyft, I lived in an apartment complex in Campbell, CA. There was a nice Ethiopian family a couple of units over from me. I would often smell the delicious food they were cooking, and they probably smelled the coffee I would roast in my Gene Cafe. I mostly roasted dry process Ethiopian coffees (and still do).
When I had a minor medical procedure scheduled that would require light sedation, I thought to myself, "I need a way to get there and back." I was going to call a regular taxi, and then I realized I'd been seeing this Green Cab parked in our lot a couple of spots over from mine.
I had a feeling it might be one of my neighbors, because I'd often seen Ethiopians driving Green Cabs.
So I left a note under the windshield wiper: "Hi neighbor! I see you drive a cab. Would you happen to be available on such-and-such a date and time to drive me over to San Jose and then back a couple of hours later?
He called, we made arrangements, and we sure had a lot to talk about between Ethiopian coffee and food and life in general.
You never know what kind of connection you may make with someone who is "just a taxi driver."
Even a couple of years ago on a business trip to Spain, the guys at the company there had a taxi driver they knew who they got to take me to their facility. Then I just organised with him to pick me up each day at a certain time when I paid. Beats me having to get the hotel or the company to keep having to call for cabs and beats him having to wait for fares.
Finally, I'm very surprised that you can't imagine somebody being rude to a low-wage worker...
People... talked before phones were invented?
Why is it so hard to imagine that the guy from the car service you always use might exchange some small talk when he drops someone off? Sometimes a friendly relationship develops between people who regularly interact
Perfectly sensible service to out-source and something that you want to work each time or have responsibility to arrange someone else to do same thing.
Heck, one of my neighbours is a taxi driver, and Im not in the office very often maybe 1 or 2 days a week, so for me having him drive me is cheaper, faster and less "Viral infectious" than paying for the commute on public transport.
I've arranged for him to pick up and deliver everything from people, dry cleaning, and packages in a pinch.
One thing about Dublin taxi drivers, they love to chat if given half a chance.
(Also it might have been a "car service" and the term taxi was being used a bit liberally there)
I very much doubt that the taxi driver in this story had hiring veto powers. But as a "does this person act as an asshole" test, with possible results of "yes" and "maybe" is still very valuable - you get to remove the (apparent) assholes from your selection pool, and focus on those that might have enough decency to not be assholes in public.
And often enough that's all you need. If you are always polite and respectful in public, but secretly get off on feeding baby chicks to your pet snake... that's weird, but not a dealbreaker for working together. As long as there's no spillover into your public life, I'm not here to judge.
here the treatment of a person of actual lower class is included as a point of reference in the interview process. it is implied that previous iterations of the hiring process failed to weed out people who were rude when the thought they could get away with it. what are you thinking is the implied purpose of such a strange test?
Stories like this also remind me of the "Magical Negro" trope where a simple but helpful black person offers sage advise or magic to help the protagonists out of a jam. These "The taxi driver was your real interviewer" stories don't (necessarily) have a racial element, but it's the same, magic wisdom of simple lower class folk idea.
When two people don't get along it's hard to find the objective truth by talking to one of them. Maybe the candidate didn't talk to the taxi driver because he was nervously thinking about the interviewer and that came off to the driver as aloof or arrogant. Maybe the driver didn't like the candidate's race, gender, experience, age, etc. Maybe something was said that was misunderstood by one or both parties. Point is - it's a very weak test.