There’s no way around it: job inter­views are usu­al­ly chal­leng­ing expe­ri­ences that can lead to great embar­rass­ment, total humil­i­a­tion, exces­sive per­spi­ra­tion, and a whole lot of anx­i­ety. When I inter­view for a job I sweat like it’s 100 degrees out and I’ve just run a marathon. I look like George Costan­za after a few bites of Kung Pao chick­en. I stum­ble my words and make bad jokes out of ner­vous­ness. Need­less to say, there haven’t been a lot of offer let­ters. Who wants to hire some­one who for­gets their own name? 

While my job inter­view expe­ri­ences leave much to be desired, a thread shared by Twit­ter user @arb has helped me real­ize that I’m not the only per­son with painful tales of cringe and rejec­tion. In a bid for a lit­tle moral sup­port (pre­sum­ably after a demor­al­iz­ing expe­ri­ence), she asked peo­ple to share their sto­ries of their worst-ever job inter­views. And oh, boy, did they deliv­er.