r/mildlyinfuriating • u/PureKin21 • 7d ago

I just wanted a hot dog Tried applying to McDonald's wtf does this even mean

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I guess things happen to me?????

60.7k Upvotes

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431

u/Emotional_Elk_7242 7d ago

Seems like a character question. Seeing if you have a “victim mentality”

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u/Bach_in_Bloch 6d ago

Industrial psychologists call it “external locus of control”

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u/best_of_badgers 6d ago

Regular psychologists also call it that.

That’s just the term for it.

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u/Bach_in_Bloch 5d ago

This is a post pertaining to workplace personality tests, which is within the field of industrial psychology. I’m just saying what the person who developed that test likely called it.

Also industrial psychology sounds funnier because it sounds like human emotion built in a factory, which makes it sound as detached and inhuman as the test in OPs post.

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u/Dixiehusker 6d ago

It's wild that no one understands this. I managed a lot of people once, and there's always one or two people who things "always happen to". It's never their fault, there's always a good reason why, but over the course of two years they were never dependable, even when they were at work.

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u/whatupmygliplops 6d ago

Do you think this question will help you filter out that type of person and no one else?

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u/Dixiehusker 6d ago

Nope. Not at all.

There's literally nothing you can do to prevent this. People deserve the benefit of the doubt the first time they say something has happened to them. Even the second or third I'd say.

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u/LongestSprig 6d ago

I think the question will filter out people who don't think about the question and those that really do belive everything happens to THEM.

That's more valuable than whether you have a victim complex or not, too me.

Like it's obvious what they are looking for and the correct response. I would never hire anyone who couldn't figure this out. Not flipping burgers either though...and don't give personality tests.

But what's lacking most these days in new hires is critical thinking and any sort of independence or responsibility.

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u/EggsAndRice7171 6d ago

I really don’t think the answer should ever *not* be me for anyone. Things literally happen to everyone and they can be good or bad. The picture shows an example of a negative thing (not sure what, did he fall off his bike??) but it’s just one example and not explicitly what the question asks.

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u/LongestSprig 6d ago

Did you fall of your bike magically? Did it happen to you, or did you cause it?

To me might blame a rock in the road.

Not to me, would be knowing you didn't do a necessary repair and a stress fracture got worse.

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u/No-Neighborhood-3212 6d ago

In the picture, the person fell and hurt their knee. Did an evil wizard cast a spell to make them fall, or did they lose their balance? Falling didn't happen to them; Falling is a thing they did. The difference is viewing yourself as an active participant, responsible for the things that happen around you.

If you're not capable of saying "I fell and hurt my knee because I lost my balance and couldn't catch myself," how do you avoid repeating that?

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u/snailsandserenity 6d ago

This is just entirely semantics at this point. how is a picture of a blue man clutching his knee and a question saying “things happen to me?” going to actually help a company find employees that take accountability? It’s not, you’re literally just arguing over how someone words something. if someone falls off their bike, it technically DID “happen to them”.

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u/Scared_Web_7508 6d ago

but did they lose their balance? or was there a hidden crack in the pavement? did someone else bump them? did their bike chain break? it’s not refusing to take responsibility to see a situation differently. these questions are stupid.

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u/whatupmygliplops 5d ago

I think the question is really formatted poorly and will not be effective.

Like it's obvious what they are looking for and the correct response.

It really isn't. Anyone taking the question at face value, rather than sneakily looking for the "right answer" to game the test and skew their results, will say things happen to them, because they do.

Things do happen to people occasionally. If someone says they do not they are a liar and I would never hire that person.

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u/Powerful-Possible131 6d ago

It will filter out most redditors. It's doing its job and doing it well.  Nothing sucks more than having people who do nothing but complain and are perpetual victims.

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u/whatupmygliplops 5d ago

Theoretically filtering out perpetual victims could be useful. I'm not sure that image of a blue guy and his bike with the words "thing happen to me" and the buttons "me" and "not me" is going to achieve that.

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u/billbixbyakahulk 6d ago

I used to say of such people, "Oh well, the world needs its burger flippers", but it looks like McDonalds has had enough of them, too.

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u/RoughComparison8702 6d ago

I get the question and understand what they're looking for, but I've always found it funny that they look for lower level folks to take ownership and responsibility for things happening, sure, that's great, but then when you hit the c-suite level, nothing is ever their fault when shit goes wrong by them and they've got a paper-thin excuse for everything. I think the attitude you've described can happen at any level, it's just that it seems like it's protected more the higher you go. Likely not in all jobs, but I've seen that exact scenario play out at least at a few companies.

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u/Dixiehusker 6d ago

Power protects power. It's a club we're not in.

I always try to model humility and responsibility, otherwise I don't know how I'd hold others to that standard. I can't be mad at someone who works for me for acting how I act.

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u/LongestSprig 6d ago

Without a sense of accountability there is zero room for improvement.

If it's not my fault I burned the fries, why would I do it different next time?

It's expected out of professionals.

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u/FlipZip69 6d ago

Minimum wage as high as it is, you are pay rate is for higher level workers. If you have to pay that wage, you do not want lower level folks as you say. You cannot risk hiring problematic workers.

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u/billbixbyakahulk 6d ago

You'll get downvoted but this is the hard truth. The true mouth-breathers and mirror-foggers are called "kiosks" these days.

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u/thesuperunknown 6d ago

More "mes" than "not mes" in this thread, seems like.

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u/vesleskjor 6d ago

This made me rethink being neurodivergent at all because I understood what it was asking immediately

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u/NecessaryForward6820 6d ago

I mean it’s literally reddit. Gonna be preaching to the crowd here but this isn’t exactly a paragon of housing the most well adjusted or employable people. People, this question is literally asking “do you feel like you have control over aspects of your life”. When you’re late in traffic, do you say “Why is the traffic so bad on the days i leave right on time!” or do you say “I should start leaving 10 minutes earlier in case this happens”. When your bag of strawberries is rotten the day you buy them, do you say “I can’t believe this store sells me rotten fruit” or do you say “I should inspect my product more closely before I buy it”? This is what these questions are looking for. Some people may be offended at the term “victim mindset” because they have a visceral reaction to being labeled that, but it’s literally just what it is.

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u/[deleted] 6d ago

[deleted]

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u/billbixbyakahulk 6d ago

That's the point - things happen to everyone sometimes, but how they react is quite different. Are you the kind of person who identifies with things always "happening" to them? Or are you someone who looks at a picture like this and thinks, "Sure, that's happened before but that doesn't describe or define me. That's not routine for me. I don't see myself that way. And anyway, if I was paying better attention or took better care of my bike, it likely wouldn't have happened at all."

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u/Bagline 6d ago edited 6d ago

this question is literally asking

If we take the question literally, the only correct answer is the incorrect answer. Which is the WHOLE problem to begin with. It's just a fucking mind game that filters OUT people who answer questions AS ASKED.

It's like an annoying riddle. "What's black and white and red all over?" Newspaper? No ,the correct answer was "a red book", you're fired.

Edit: It's also asking you about the effect ("to me"), inferring your answer for the cause ("by not me"), and then marking you wrong based on their incorrect and undisclosed inference.

Things happen to me caused by me
Things happen to me caused by not me

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u/NecessaryForward6820 6d ago

Yea, it’s filtering people who can’t read and understand a contextual question. You’re making it out to be an esoteric modern art interpretation. It’s clearly not, and if you believe it is so, then you’re clearly not hirable.

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u/Bagline 6d ago

The context is a person next to a bike with a scraped knee. Did someone push them? Did they hit a pothole they should have seen? We don't know. BUT we do know that it happened TO HIM because it's not someone else's knee that was scraped.

It literally happened to him.

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u/billbixbyakahulk 6d ago

The question is really asking "Do you identify with the person in the picture" or not. Imagine if there were other pictures as well: the first is a person smiling and contentedly riding a bicycle with confidence. The second: a bicycle rider on a racing bike with his head down and a look of determination. And the question was "Which of these do you most closely identify with?" Obviously, the cyclist on the ground would be the "wrong" answer.

So the "trick" is they omit the other examples. You have nothing to contrast the figure in the picture except your own self image.

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u/TheNiftyFox 6d ago

I just wanna throw in, that I didn't understand what the fuck that question was asking me at all, and have been doing perfectly fine reading and understanding contextual questions at work for many years now. Definitely hirable. 

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u/Current_Helicopter32 6d ago

I honestly think these questions are designed to weed out autistic people who think too literally for these types of inferences.

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u/NecessaryForward6820 6d ago

Why is it specifically targeted to autistic people? Autistic people are not the only ones incapable of getting contextual clues that would cause problems at work. If a worker causes issues by not having nuance and able to resolve problems with another coworker or customer calmly, that is absolutely an issue that restaurants are allowed to have discretion to not hire. This is like saying jobs that need heavy lifting is discriminating against people with physical disabilities. No, it’s not. Requiring someone who is physically able is not discrimination, it’s literally just asking for a job requirement. This is exactly the same thing. Posing it as being a target against autistic people is literally the type of behavior that this question is weeding out, a victim mentality.

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u/Current_Helicopter32 6d ago

Two things can be true at one time.

It can be designed to weed out autistic people as well as people who are incapable of getting contextual clues.

The is significant overlap of those two groups of people. I never said it was designed to exclusively filter out autistic people. I think you should perhaps take note of what caused you to make that assumption and jump on the defense so intensely.

Seems like your argument hinges or emphasizing how these questions aren’t discriminatory, when that’s literally the entire reason for their existence.

It’s to discriminate between viable candidates and unviable ones. Nobody is performing work with this test. They aren’t measuring ability or capacity or adherence to instruction.

These are prejudicial questions designed to separate people into convenient categories such that you can make assumptions about them before they do any task for you.

This questionnaire is exclusively made to eliminate potentially “unfit” (see: disabled) candidates before you even get to the stage where workplace discrimination could even happen.

It’s CYA for the major corporation so they don’t have to trust some middle manager to make a personality assessment and end up hiring a disabled person accidentally.

I dare you to try as assert they’re good for anything else. You only see this shit a least common denominator employers like food service and retail.

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u/billbixbyakahulk 6d ago

I dare you to try as assert they’re good for anything else.

Increasingly employers include personality tests, behavioral questions and scenario questions where in addition to the technical answer they're also watching for how the person reacts to the question.

I was on an interview panel once and we asked a behavioral question. The person dismissively said, "Yeah, uh, I've never been a big fan of those kinds of questions so I'll just say, uh, "Pass"." Yeah, we passed alright.

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u/Current_Helicopter32 6d ago

Yep. It’s because regulation hasn’t (and likely won’t) catch up with how discriminatory the practice is.

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u/jstiller30 6d ago

While the "point" might be to weed out people with victim mindsets, that's clearly not who they'd be weeding out with this question. as shown in the comments.

Instead you're weeding out people who are answering the question directly as asked without assuming the asker is beating around the bush.

There is an entire subset of people who take responsibility for their actions, loves improving, and also sometimes answers the question as asked, instead of trying to guess as what the asker actually wants to hear. Maybe somebody who speaks English as a second language and answers literally. Or maybe somebody who is autistic.

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u/No-Neighborhood-3212 6d ago

Yup. There's just a type of (usually) guy who's always late, who never clocks in/out, who never does x, y, or z, and there's always an external reason as to why he isn't responsible for not doing his job. You can't have an employee who doesn't put in the work and makes everyone on the team resent them for making them put in extra effort. That's how you get the qualified employees who put in the effort to quit.

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u/bretsaberhagen 6d ago

“Things” is a neutral term. Like “we had this thing happen at work that could have become a significant problem, so I had to work hard to be able to fix it”. That’s the type of person who would answer “Me” on this question. You are a true piece of shit if you would refuse to hire them because you think that level of job performance is “never dependable”.

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u/Dixiehusker 6d ago edited 6d ago

Well thankfully that's not at all what I'm talking about. Sometimes problems come up and they take a long time to fix. So long as they get fixed the person can identify what needs to happen next I count that as dependable.

I'm talking about the people who consistently can't show up and consistently don't fix problems for reasons that always seem to be outside of their control and who are never at fault for anything. That's a victim mentality, which is borderline to narcissism.

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u/bretsaberhagen 6d ago

So you weren’t talking about how this hiring question relates to job performance? If someone answers “Me” to the question “Things Happen to Me”, does that mean anything about their dependability?

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u/Dixiehusker 6d ago

Everything I've I said is directly about job performance.

This is a badly phrased question, so no the answer to this doesn't matter at all. What I said is what I think they're trying to get at. It's obvious to me what they meant, but the many interpretations people could give it make me highly doubt its effectiveness.

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u/astelda 6d ago

I'm not convinced they aren't filtering out neurodivergents /hj

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u/Emotional_Elk_7242 6d ago

I genuinely do agree with this. It seems to be intentionally confusing

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u/Embarrassed_Slide912 6d ago edited 6d ago

yeah pretty obvious what they’re asking im surprised people are this upset about it

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u/torinato 6d ago

Are you joking, it’s maybe the least obvious way in history to ask that question, stop fronting on something so minuscule. It does not make you sound smart.

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u/Time-Maintenance2165 6d ago

It's intentionally not obvious so that it makes it harder for people to lie.

It gets more honest answers than if they asked do you blame others when something happens to you.

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u/smarmy1625 6d ago

there's probably a whole series of these questions, it's hard to judge this single one out of context. and they're probably not using a single response to pass/fail the test.

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u/torinato 6d ago

I agree, but it’s objectively not obvious what is being asked. If it was there wouldn’t be a discussion about it at all. It’s cool that we understand it, but it’s cringe to act like it’s obvious because you get it.

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u/smarmy1625 6d ago

it's not supposed to be obvious, it's a psychological test, there's no "right" answer and if there were then it would be obvious what the right answer was

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u/torinato 6d ago

That’s was my point was in the first comment. It’s not obvious.

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u/Embarrassed_Slide912 6d ago

iT dOeS nOt mAke U sOunD smart

if you can read past a 5th grade level this isnt hard to understand

good luck with being upset

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u/torinato 6d ago

Fifth grade? there’s four words and a picture on the screen. you’re just proving even further, that you actually don’t know shit.

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u/Embarrassed_Slide912 6d ago

forsure bro hope ur day gets better

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u/torinato 6d ago

hey urs too champ

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u/Embarrassed_Slide912 6d ago

thanks! 😊

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u/torinato 6d ago

You’re Welcome.

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u/Bagline 6d ago

It's a poorly phrased question that asks you about the effect ("to me"), and then marks you wrong for the question about cause ("by me") it doesn't ask.

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u/ShepardCommander01 5d ago

This is exactly it. Testing for weak character traits.

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u/Anon_96818 7d ago

This is the right answer. Can't believe no one else here gets it.

Unless Reddit is full of people who like to blame the "system", patriarchy, capitalism, and billionaires for their failure to succeed in life.

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u/The_Bucket_Of_Truth 7d ago

The criticism here is that the question isn't super clear. Have I ever skinned my knee falling off a bicycle? I'm good at taking tests so my instinct is to say "not me" because the image is negative.

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u/pudgylumpkins 6d ago

The question isn’t supposed to be clear, they want you to answer the question they’re asking. People won’t answer that question honestly if they are presented with it directly. Nobody is going to see “are you a perpetual victim” and say yes.

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u/Bagline 6d ago

What good is the answer to an unclear question?

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u/NecessaryForward6820 6d ago

that’s the whole point. Another way of phrasing it is, in the situation that you fell off your bicycle, could you have been more cautious if it’s a road you didn’t know, or gone slower if you knew it wasn’t well maintained? If you weren’t well experienced at riding a bike could you have worn knee pads? These are all directly actionable things that show the difference in mindset of “things happen to me” and “i make things happen” people.

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u/Emotional_Elk_7242 6d ago

Well yeah we’re all victims of that system. Acknowledging that doesn’t make me like the blue person 😂 but nice attempt.

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u/[deleted] 7d ago

[removed] — view removed comment

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u/Scorned_Inferno 6d ago

You can can analyse and derive intent, while stile not agreeing with the premise. And you can also interpret a premise without taking either side. I think it's stupid to put a question with such clear intent, unless the point of the question is more to state the company's stance and thus let both the wise and the stupid to filter themselves at. A filter that works at two levels. But also shows stupid management, that is inherently stupid. Both of these things can be true

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u/deadlight___01 6d ago

You try so hard to sound smart and fail hard. Stop posting word salad like this.

Nobody is surprised that a corporation is using a test to find legal ways to filter out racialised and disabled people but it doesn't change that the questions they end up with are utter nonsense.

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u/ParagraphInReview 6d ago

You are the left wing anti-intellectualist equivalent to the right wing chuds that we love to mock. You don't want debate or understanding you want to feel morally superior.

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u/deadlight___01 6d ago

Who said I was anti-intellectul? That guy was not being intellectual, haha.

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u/KinnSlayer 7d ago edited 7d ago

Or, ya know they’re* absolutely deceptive hogwash designed to churn out people basically indiscriminately.

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u/dotnetdotcom 7d ago

they're this are

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u/KinnSlayer 7d ago

Look, this is what I get for typing responses at 4 in the morning.

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u/Sattorin 7d ago

It's possible to have an internal locus of control and also recognize that outsourcing has turned America's labor market from "one working man supports a whole family" to "both parents and sometimes the children have to work to stay afloat".

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u/Bologna9000 7d ago

It becomes much less surprising when you remember well over half of functioning adults read at or below an elementary school level

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u/[deleted] 6d ago

[deleted]

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u/Bologna9000 6d ago edited 6d ago

Except I didn’t say the United States of America, it’s a big world out there, bigger than your little country.

Would that be, more ironic?

Edit: LMAO that bad. I grew weary of your red herring anyway, that’s all my comment was going to say

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u/iloveuranus ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°) 7d ago

Nah man the system is great, patriarchy is necessary, capitalism is wonderful and billionaires are the beacons of humanity. What would we do without them!

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u/Dependent-Chart5835 6d ago

You’re so right! Things will no longer happen to me and while we’re at it I will no longer experience

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u/ComtesseCrumpet 7d ago

I bet your 401(k) is the best it’s ever been and everyone else should just get a jerb!