Glowforge-made Japanese Manhole Cover Coasters!

But are they technically manhole covers if people can’t go through them?

My problem with the very specific answer your paired questions evoke is that they rely on knowledge that is not required for the job (actually, maybe it is required for the job you’re hiring for!). The first question alone gives more room for generalized knowledge and creativity. I’ve done a decent amount of interviewing and I do like a question that forces people to think on their feet, but don’t love something that unnecessarily stresses the interviewee. Of course, all that said, it largely depends on how you introduce the question. :slight_smile: I did once turn down a job because I thought the interview was obnoxious.

Edited: maybe you mean you’re not asking those original questions anyway. I do like the questions you mentioned in the end… thought-provoking.

I like that. May have to steal it if I ever go back to the traditional workforce (blergh).
My favorite generic interview question has been to share a challenge they faced and how they overcame it. Similar theme… it forces them to admit to a weakness (although some simply cannot do it), and shows how they handle adversity.

Most of my work experience is in the non-profit world. You would not believe some of these wacky interviews I’ve gone through or seen take place. Let’s just say I’ve played a lot of silly ice-breaking games with potential employees. :wink:

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  1. to properly cover the round manholes.
  2. circles are unique in their roundness.
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The first is also the answer to the second that the manhole covers are usually at the end of round pipes and round gives the greatest area for the least materials :sunglasses:

When is a manhole cover not really a manhole cover? When it is an access panel.

The beautiful Japanese manhole covers go way back before them to the Edo period when beauty was demanded as well as functionality, and that has pretty much stuck in most of japanese culture and I dearly wish it to be more expected in ours.

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Not everyone got the memo …

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Most of the covers I’ve shot are pre-digital. There are some really great covers domestically, too.

Thanks for necro’ing this thread. I enjoyed reading through it.

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I would think a possible 3rd reason would be easier to move (ie roll) a round manhole cover… those triangular ones are a b%$ch to roll :grin:

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I always ask what’s the biggest mistake you’ve made on the job, and how did you fix it.
If they have never made a mistake (won’t admit one) then I won’t work with them. That was the one single red flag on one gal my team did hire, and she never ever could be corrected about anything. Her way was always right. She was insufferable and difficult.
People don’t expect that question, and they have to go off script a little, too, which makes for a different insight into who they are. It tells me whether they can admit mistakes, and the bigger the mistake, the funnier the story, and also, the better the creativitiy required to correct the mistake.

I don’t care what the mistake was. I care about a person who owns their mistakes. Sent the wrong proposal to a client? Awesome. With financials? even better. Put the lock-up ledgers on top of your car to unlock and then drove off? Great! they scattered through the streets of Austin? Yow! I bet that hurt… Now… How do you fix that?

PS… pretty covers. I like them.

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interestingly enough, i try to get people to take a similar approach from the opposite perspective when we create high end proposals. i like people to put anecdotes on the resume pages about a problem/issue that happened on one of their jobs, how they solved it, and why that made the client happy. doesn’t need to be something huge, but the idea is that (a) the anecdote makes things personal, (b) it shows we know that shit happens and sometimes you just have to roll with it, and (c) we know how to solve problems and make clients look good.

if you asked me, i’d have a bunch of stories. i’ve been doing this stuff a long time, can’t possibly have not made big mistakes. and i have a rule for my vendors. i don’t expect you to be perfect, but the people i keep using are the ones who don’t repeatedly make the same mistake and who fix them with no hassles when they do. i pay extra for that because we work on tight deadlines.

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Yes! My boss once pressured me to hire someone who failed my challenge “test” and he was also a PITA to work with. It was a receptionist position and he refused to answer the phones for several days because he was avoiding a call. Uhm. Then he deleted our financial database by accident and lied about it (he later admitted to lying when I called him out). What a mess. He was the only person I hired who I ever had to fire. Also, I never went against my instincts when hiring again, no matter how much pressure I got.

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several days? after one hour, i’d be saying, “answer or go home and don’t come back.”

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This was a small, educational non-profit. One of the values was on developing employees, so we did spend a good amount of time mentoring, encouraging, and redirecting, especially for some of our younger/less experienced team members. There was a warning system, etc. It actually worked well for a lot of people who just didn’t quite understand how to work well in a professional setting. As for the phone, it took awhile for me to figure out what was going on. We all pitched in, so if he was away from the phone, someone would just answer it. It wasn’t until I was standing by his office when the phone was ringing and he wasn’t answering it that I realized what was going on.

i can definitely appreciate “developing employees.” and not realizing it right away. i’ve worked at very small companies (5-25 people) before.

but that’s still an “i will only tell you this once” kind of things for me. if something is one of the two main functions of your job, you don’t get to ignore it for personal reasons.

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My husband had a secretary who had her multiline phone replaced with a single-line phone while he was out of the office one day. She told him the other one rang too much. :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:

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Points for problem solving initiative at least.

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Yes. Once I realized what he was doing, it stopped immediately. It’s the very foundation of the job.

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Wow. How did he react to that? :slight_smile:

He was working for an organization that administered a Job Training Partnership Act down in Texas…they would pay employers to hire and train people who were unemployed because they lacked job skills. His office was staffed with people from the program, and the first thing he was told when they put him in charge was that he wasn’t allowed to fire anybody. It was an interesting place. :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye: So pretty much all he could do was tell her to get the multiline phone back and answer it when it rang.

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Ah, yes. Similar vibe. My boss did not want to fire this guy, but I was not backing down. I’m all for building job skills and mentoring, but he was so outrageously bad at this job that it wasn’t funny. And he was a smart guy with some work experience. I think he felt like the job was beneath him and there was no amount of mentoring that was going to change his attitude. In the end, I told him that he could leave freely or he would be terminated, but that we both knew it wasn’t going to work. Can’t remember which way he went.

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you can’t build skills or mentor someone if they’re not willing to do their part.

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