in which I curb-stomp a woman's soul

You'll recall my posts from a while back in which I wrote about the "language obstacle course" that I had been commissioned to create for my boss. The test was and is meant to act as a way to screen potential hires, separating the wheat from the chaff in terms of linguistic competence—difficult, but not impossible, as nearly thirty people can attest. We recently screened a young lady from Yale; she scored a 79 on the test, which is a passing grade given that we had lowered the passing threshold to 70 a year or so ago. I was especially impressed by how she handled the paraphrasing section of the test. Alas, this young lady won't be working with us; she had been looking at several potential employers, and I'm pretty sure she selected a company that's offering better pay and benefits. Can't say I blame her.

Then, just yesterday, a Komerican lady with a pinched, unhappy expression arrived ten minutes late for her interview—not a good first impression. She blabbed that she had gone to the wrong branch of our institute (we have several branches in about four different buildings in the Daechi neighborhood)—which is also not a good way to make a good first impression. With two strikes against her, she sat down to take my test, which was proctored by one of my coworkers. She got through three of the four parts, but during the final part, which is the bugbearish grammar section, she suddenly stopped partway through, stood up, and told my coworker that she hadn't expected the test to be "this intense." Basically, she folded and gave up, utterly intimidated by the test.

I saw the moment this lady got up, but I didn't realize she had stood up in medias res: I thought she had finished the test and was so frazzled that she'd decided to leave. Nope: she simply stopped partway through the fourth section, unable to take any more. Wow.

I left the office to hit the restroom, and when I came back, the lady was gone and the office was in an uproar. My coworker, who was talking loudly to all our other coworkers about what had happened, was flabbergasted: this was something of a red-letter day. No one just walks away from a test. The moment I walked back in on all the noise, people began sarcastically applauding and congratulating me on having designed a test that had finally scared someone away. I grimaced, initially guilty, then I raised my hands in the air like a bloody-but-victorious boxer. My coworker, perhaps realizing that talking so loudly about this poor woman was probably in bad form, jokingly said, "What gossipy people we are!"—to which another coworker shouted, "Yeah, but you started it!"

In truth, it was bad form to rake this lady over the coals in absentia. At the same time, she had to have known something about the test, given that she had spoken with my boss over the phone to arrange the interview. She also had to have known why we test people this way: because they're going to work in a job in which language matters. We do, in fact, talk the lingo of editing and proofreading in our office, so yes, the test is designed to measure a person's competence in those areas.

For his part, the boss was initially angry at the woman's embarrassingly defeatist attitude, but he was eventually glad to see her go. I noted that, even though she didn't finish the test, we all learned something about her character. "Yeah," said the boss: "she gives up when there's pressure. We don't need people like her, not when we work on deadlines." I agree.

That said, I do feel a bit guilty for being the cause of this woman's freakout. While I take grim satisfaction in knowing that my test can actually strike fear into some weaker hearts, I'm not the type to dwell on—or to revel in—my own potential for cruelty. Here's hoping that this trepidatious Komerican is the last such person to cross our threshold. I'm not sure I want to be applauded a second time for my ability to crush souls.