Cane her in the stockroom, said my husband

I had to laugh the other night. Literally burst out laughing actually.

Our son was in, with a girl friend, they were sitting on the sofa and son was helping her complete an online application form for a graduate management training position with John Lewis Partnership. P was sitting in his favourite corner taking some figures from his laptop and making notes, I was ironing. They got to the part on the application where a load of scenarios are put to the applicant and they have to check-box the best and worst outcome, in their opinion, for each one.

Here was the first question, I've shortened it a bit:-

You're managing the china and glassware dept; a sales girl, Gloria, is pricing some new stock while a queue of customers wait to be served. You call her to serve but she rudely tells you to make your mind up whether you want pricing done or customers served. Then she grumpily comes over. All in view of the customers. Do you -

1. Serve the customers yourself and let Gloria continue pricing.

2. Take Gloria to the nearest stockroom and tell her she's out of order.

3. Immediately report her attitude to the Floor Manager for advice.

4. Wait till the customers have gone and then ask Gloria what came over her .

5. Make Gloria serve the customers while you go to Personnel to report an official verbal warning over her behaviour.

Remember you can't make any assumptions, you have to give your best and worst answer based just on the information given. Son and friend were reading this stuff out loud and debating the ins and outs, I added my thoughts as I ironed away, P seemed wrapped up in his numbers.

Then he held up his notepad for me alone to see, on a fresh page he'd written STOCKROOM - CANE - TEARS - BACK TO WORK - SIMPLE.

I burst out laughing, I nearly burned the shirt I was ironing too.

'What's up mom? It's not that funny,' said my son.

'No I suppose not, in fact not at all,' I said, 'I was just imagining your dad in such a situation, I think he'd probably lose patience.'

They both looked at me as if I was a bit odd.

The correct answer by the way was No.4 (it was a sample question), after that there were 12 more situation questions, some of them easy others quite difficult because they don't give you enough information to make the kind of sensible judgement you'd like to.

Anyway my husband's answer was nowhere on the list.

Ronnie

xx