In this era of data mining and capturing as much info as possible, from the likes of Amazon Facebook and everyone else, I'm reminded of an incident from simpler times.
Years ago, I applied for a job at a Rite Aid near me. I was already a cashier at a convenience store during the week, but was looking to pickup some weekend shifts. They offered me a paper application and that's when all the fun b began.
Now most places ask if you're single or married right? Not here. They wanted to know if you were married, single, divorced, separated or widowed. They wanted to know the date of your marriage, how long you'd been separated and when your divorce was finalized. But wait there's more!
As I looked on with growing alarm, they wanted to know about your dependents. Their names, birth dates and if any children were adopted. Mind you, this is for a part-time cashiers job. So I asked the lady, "do people actually give out all this personal information?" she said "they do if they want to work here." I asked if anyone had ever refused and she said "no." Astonished, I kept reading.
Next they wanted your height, weight, eve color and hair color. So we know that's being sent to the police in case of an "incident" she proffered. Make and model of car and how much you paid for it. They wanted not just your bank account and routing numbers (not just for pay) but ALL of your investment account information. Stocks, bonds, mutual funds and how much cash you had on hand. Your net worth going back 10 years and everyplace you lived for the same period, addresses and everything. They also wanted to know the occupants of each household, thus violating their privacy as well.
At this point, since I'm a privacy advocate, I took a deep breath and asked her if I could get a second copy and look over them at home. Because NOBODY was going to believe this unless they saw it. These applications were among the thing I lost during the robbery of late 2017 and early 2018. As I would pull them out from time to time and show them to people. I never went back there and certainly would never have accepted a position with the. I don't know if this was a corporate thing or something a rogue branch was doing on it's own. However, there was no way in hell I was handing over that kind of information.
There's more. every shift the workers had to stand for inspection. They'd look inside your mouth, ears and check your hair. Shoes had to be shined and if you had any stray fibers on your clothing (they had a magnifying glass) you had to remove it or be sent home. The lady told me they'd been looking for people for months, with no luck. I told her the invasive processes they deployed might be the reason. Have you ever had a crazy job application/interview like this? and how did you react?
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The job application and interview process is a great time for companies to extract really personal information from applicants because of the power differential. Most jobseekers are desperate enough to answer even the most ridiculous invasions of privacy in order to secure that job.
We had numerous cases here were the job applications were a front to collect data and sell them on to insurance and multi level marketing companies in order for them to generate leads for them. So scammy.
The lightbulb came on for me at an agency where they wanted us to complete a survey for the company providing the urine drug screening. I got a chance to talk to the very revealing employee behind it and he admitted it was all a scam. The tests only cost the agency 5 bucks, but they jacked the price up to like $35 payable before we were even offered any work. The agency split the fees with the testing company. The guy also tole me that the survey results would be sold, so I shouldn't put in any real information. It was eye-opening.
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You have to pay for your own urine screening as part of the pre-employment check up? That sure sounds like a scam ripe for abuse.
I'm an intrepreter. I translate from Russian to Arabic and vice versa. Your interview made me remember the day whe I was invited by the agency to translate in the court. Before they started to ask questions to the guilty guy. The judge almost interrogated me. She asked me a lot of questions about my family and where I live and how I started living here in Russia and even if I know the guy or not. I didn't have such experiece before and I just aswered her because I thought I should. Then I asked the advocates there and they told me that I didn't have to aswer everything. I didn't know about that. That was my most weird experience in my work. lol That's why I prefer now to work only with private companies. :)
I can understand, believe me. In your case in court anyone would have answered like you did. In situations I've been in they are clearly looking to sell the information. It's just not obvious to most people.
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How crazy haha. Corporations treat us like herd animals, in a despot and invasive way. There is no respect for privacy, this world is like to move hahahaha.
Yep. But you know what? It's awesome when that lightbulb comes on and the person starts thinking "wait a minute, why do they need to know that? and starts becoming aware.
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Yea the job application information has a ton of your personal information. People just don't really care about the information as much you think they would.
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When I asked the lady if anyone else had questioned why they were seeking all this information, she said no, I was the only one.
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