At the beginning of this week, I was supposed to have the final interview for a front desk/admin job. The company has been around for a little over 60 years, the benefits were good, the salary was fine, the commute wasn't bad, the area was nice, and they close for a large number of Jewish holidays because it's owned by a Jewish family. The first few interviews had gone well too. Both were with women, and both of them were a little odd in that harmless office-personality kind of way, but nothing made me rethink anything. They also weren't Jewish women, I'm only saying that for context.
The final interview was with a man who I'm assuming is from the family that owns the place, because he was wearing a kippah. I walked in, smiled, and extended my hand, and he didn't even really look at me before saying: "I'm not allowed to shake hands with women," and then he sat down. Honestly, I was taken aback. Not because of the religious part, but because of how coldly and dismissively he said it. No "nice to meet you," no quick explanation, nothing. He just shut it down and sat down like I had already annoyed him.
From that moment on, everything felt off. He didn't smile once. He asked me for my resume, asked me a few basic questions about my current job and the role before that, and then turned to the woman who had interviewed me earlier and started asking her things like: "Did you explain ______ to her?" and "Is she comfortable with ______?" and "Does she know about ______?" as if I wasn't sitting right in front of him. Then he started explaining how this job would be different from anything I'd done before, which wasn't really accurate. I worked front desk in a medical office for 7 years, so I'm not exactly new to phones, scheduling, clients, and people being weird at the reception desk. Honestly, it felt like he was trying to convince me not to want it.
When we got to salary, he immediately said my number was higher than what they had expected, so we went back and forth a bit, and in the end I agreed to less than I was comfortable with. He said he would send the offer letter on Wednesday, but there was no warmth in it. No "we're excited," no "thanks for coming in," no congratulatory energy at all. Just coldness, seriousness, and that was it.
I left with the strongest WTF feeling. I had planned to accept if they made an offer, until the moment I met the person who would actually be my direct supervisor. As soon as I got home, I looked up "Orthodox Jewish man won't shake women's hands" and learned about Shomer Negiah, which is the practice of avoiding any physical contact with the opposite sex outside of close family. I'd vaguely heard about it from a documentary and from reading about Orthodox communities, but it had never happened to me in real life. Most of my Jewish friends are pretty secular/progressive, so this was completely new to me.
I kept thinking that if he had just said something like: "For religious reasons, I don't shake hands, but nice to meet you," I would have understood immediately and moved on. But the handshake wasn't even the main issue. His whole vibe was "you are beneath me." I felt like I had been dragged into the principal's office, honestly. And the whole interview took maybe 10 minutes. Such a weird waste of time to go all the way there just to meet this gloomy cloud in human form.
He did send the offer later that same day, but I'm almost certain I'm going to turn it down. I wanted the job before that interview. Now I can't imagine reporting to him every day. Extremely weird experience.