{"id":69,"date":"2003-07-02T22:47:00","date_gmt":"2003-07-02T22:47:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/?p=69"},"modified":"2018-08-02T16:19:19","modified_gmt":"2018-08-02T21:19:19","slug":"69","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/2003\/07\/02\/69\/","title":{"rendered":"Ask a Stupid Question"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><i>Business 2.0<\/i> (who has helpfully decided sometime today to put much of its content behind a subscription, thanks, guys) has a brief (briefer now with everything but the lead hidden away, thanks, guys) piece on <a href=\"https:\/\/www.business2.com\/articles\/mag\/0,1640,49931,00.html\" target=\"new\">trick interview questions<\/a>.  <\/p>\n<p>The article, and the lead (which you can yet see) describes them as &#8220;sadistic&#8221; and &#8220;puzzling&#8221; attempts to see how the interviewee fares with &#8220;sadistic&#8221; and &#8220;tricky&#8221; and potentially &#8220;unanswerable&#8221; questions, because obviously that&#8217;s the nature of the corporate environment.<\/p>\n<p>As a service to my readers, I have put together this handy list of answers you can use in case the sadistic HR nutbar whips this out (the technical interview guys would never entertain such a fad, right?):<\/p>\n<p><b>Question: Why are manhole covers round?<\/b><\/p>\n<ul>Because the manholes are round.<\/ul>\n<p><b>Question: Why are Coke cans tapered?<\/b><\/p>\n<ul>Before you answer this, challenge the interviewer to prove they are, in fact, tapered.<\/p>\n<p><b>Bonus alternate answer:<\/b>  To use the mystical powers of the pyramid to preserve the soda&#8217;s tooth-dissolving power.<\/ul>\n<p><b>Question:  How would you weigh the world&#8217;s fattest man without using a scale? <\/b><\/p>\n<ul>You cannot.  The definition of <i>weigh<\/i> implies putting on a scale to determine the impact of gravity on an object.<\/p>\n<p><b>Bonus alternate answer:<\/b>  &#8220;I wouldn&#8217;t.&#8221;<\/ul>\n<p><b>Question:  How many tennis balls are in the air in New Zealand right now?<\/b><\/p>\n<ul>New Zealand is 15.5 hours ahead of the United States.  Odds are, <i>none<\/i> right now unless they&#8217;ve started middle-of-the-night tennis leagues. <\/p>\n<p><b>Bonus alternate answer:<\/b>  1,472 American tennis balls (2,447.62 New Zealand tennis balls).  Answer right away, and let the interviewer prove differently.<\/ul>\n<p>These answers will prove to your interviewer that you&#8217;re decisive when it comes to selecting a plausible lie, which is only reinforcing the impression he or she has gotten from your resume and the interview this far.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Business 2.0 (who has helpfully decided sometime today to put much of its content behind a subscription, thanks, guys) has a brief (briefer now with everything but the lead hidden away, thanks, guys) piece on trick interview questions. The article, and the lead (which you can yet see) describes them as &#8220;sadistic&#8221; and &#8220;puzzling&#8221; attempts [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3334,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-69","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-life"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3334"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=69"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":21452,"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69\/revisions\/21452"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=69"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=69"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=69"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}