Weather you’re sweating and shaking or calm and collective, if you’ve been to one interview you’ve pretty much been to them all. If you’ve been to several you’ve probably got down a little speech for each question. There’s the common ones like, “What did you like most/least about your last job?” or “What would you do if you saw another employee stealing?” But sometimes you get a question that catches you off guard, the one that makes your entire interview look rehearsed. As you sit there with a blank face, which is not only blank but getting warmer and warmer with each “Umm” that comes out of your mouth, five seconds seems like five minutes, and then who knows, maybe you come up with a clever answer that rebuilds your confidence or you say something you’re not happy with so it’s all you can think about, distracting you from the rest of your interview.

   This happened to me the other day, I was feeling calm and collective, I excelled in the typing test and was ready for the same generic interview questions that I’ve been asked in the several other interviews I’ve been to. After a few, as I was ready for, generic interview questions, I got asked what is probably the most complicated question I have ever been asked in an interview, “People are mostly… what?” FROZE! So many thoughts were running threw my head, “People are mostly… what?” good, bad, beautiful, ugly, dumb, smart… what? I quickly decided to go with the good or bad, so “People are mostly… good or bad?” Not giving it much thought, I blankly said “Good” gave it few more seconds of thought as he writes down my one word answer, I added “But there are those bad seeds out there”. I brushed off the awkward pause and tried to focus, but from then on all I could think about was what a good answer to that question would be.

   How do you sum up all of mankind into one word, one sentence, or even one paragraph? Where is the line between good or bad, beautiful or ugly, dumb or smart, and once you’ve found that line how do you determine if the majority of the people are this or that? Sure it would be nice to think that every one is a good hearted, beautiful, clever and witty person, but once again where is that line? Everyone has different standards of where the line should be, so everyone would get different results. Not only would every person get different results, but every day the results would change because a single person can be different each day. Now why should every person be judged with the same “line system” every person is different, every person was raised different, and taught different things. So now you have to carefully evaluate each person and create a unique “line system” for every individual. I’m sure that is not the answer an interviewer would be looking for, just a simple professional answer would be good enough. But what is simple when it comes to a person let alone people?