Basic Trope: The interview for a job goes awry as the interviewees are too weird or not good enough.
- Straight: Bob holds auditions for someone to be his foil. Hilarity Ensues as people auditioning are too quirky for his tastes.
- Exaggerated: Bob gets a succession of mental patients, criminals fresh out of prison, and generally terrifying people.
- Downplayed: A few people have some odd features or tics, some of which Bob may even find tasteless, but nothing outlandish.
- Justified: Bob (or Tom!) holds a serious audition, but due to a miscommunication ends up interviewing people who think they're auditioning for something else entirely.
- Inverted:
- Bob goes to thousands of job interviews, but his quirkiness gets him rejected from all of his jobs.
- Bob goes to thousands of job interviews, but ends up fleeing or rejecting them due to being obviously horrible workplaces. They prove too dangerous, illegal, or are insultingly low wages for the position expecting a doctor to work for minimum wage.
- The montage shows Bob scaring away or rejecting perfectly reasonable people due to insane demands including literally impossible ones like working 200 hours a week, or wanting five years experience in a program released yesterday.
- Bob gets a serious of really good interviewees, and then he debates which one is the best to hire.
- Subverted:
- Bob soon finds Alice who he thinks would be perfect for the role...
- Despite some of the interviewees being a little strange, they are skilled enough for the job.
- Double Subverted:
- ...until Alice shows her true quirky colors.
- Unfortunately, Bob is recruiting on behalf of someone who simply won't keep people who can reflect negatively on them, regardless of actual talent.
- Parodied: It turns out all the interviewees are sitting at one long table and have only said one sentence each, and even better, they're on some kind of conveyor belt.
- Zig Zagged: They're only given ten seconds, and a lot seem quirky and unsuited - but the job calls for a quirky character and they're all well suited. They get called back for proper interviews with a higher boss, and then their quirkiness is their undoing.
- Alice then turns out to reveals despite her quirkiness, she can be a perfect foil.
- Averted: No one is quirky.
- Enforced: ???
- Lampshaded: "I'm going to be saying "Next!" a lot, won't I?"
- Invoked: Bob tells each interviewee they only have five/ten/thirty seconds for their interview.
- Exploited: Alice sets up some really bad people to audition before her so she looks better by comparison and Bob will hire her.
- Defied: Bob decides that instead of holding auditions, he asks his buddy Alex to be his foil.
- Discussed: ???
- Conversed: ???
- Deconstructed:
- A handful of the interviewees were threatening Bob that if he rejects them, they will kill him.
- The interviewing process was long, expensive, and never managed to rake in what Bob wanted.
- Reconstructed:
- Bob then holds auditions for a bodyguard and it still goes awry.
- The large number of failed candidates talk to their friends about the job interview. This ultimately concludes in an ideal candidate hearing about it through proximity. They manage to track down Bob and get recruited for the position.
- Implied: We only see Alice going in for the interview. Bob looks exhausted and says, "Please tell me you're normal."
Back to Terrible Interviewees Montage
