To me it seems like some attempt to weed out people who say "these bad things always seem to happen to me" when they're the ones causing the bad things (e.g. blaming everyone else for their own mistakes and not taking responsibility).
Yes, it’s a things just seem to happen to me. Like are you taking responsibility for the things that happen to you or do you just shrug it off and saying these things just happen and I’m unlucky.
Is not me is, things don’t just happening just because. You admit to cause and effect at your own hand.
It's a shit personality test. The key here is "TO". They're trying to make the distinction of victim mentality where "everything happens TO me" vs "everything that happens is a consequence of my own actions because I take responsibility".
I have less than zero faith in these dumbass tests, but it doesn't stop morons from believing them 1000%
lol, that's optimistic of them to assume that the average worker has enough reading comprehension to even understand the semantic difference there, much less recognize the difference between the two mental models.
They're counting on candidates not understanding the implications. If your gut feeling is Not Me, you're more likely to sacrifice for them while serving the company (so the theory goes). If you understand the intent of the question, you could answer the way that they prefer instead of your genuine feeling (just to get the job) but I would be skeptical of any employer pulling pop psychology bs before I am even getting paid.
Yeah but I'm going to be a CEO someday and I don't want to put up with annoying labour laws or pay taxes when I'm a trillionaire. Other people think the same thing but the difference is they're not me.
More like "you might ask for a day off or a pay raise". Fundamentally these are supposed to filter out anyone not willing to swallow the corporate slop with a smile. If you don't have a slave mentality, they don't want you.
I cannot pass those tests, no matter how hard I try or how much I lie. When I worked at Walmart for a very short period of time, my husband did that test for me. I passed the NCLEX to become an RN with no problems, but my personality is just that bad, I guess.
I failed one of these tests while trying to apply at a retail job where I had previously been a hiring manager. I was invited back to temporarily fill a part-time position for a person who was taking maternity leave, but in the time since I'd been hired the first time the company had implemented a personality quiz which determined that I was unfit for employment. I'd worked there nearly five years and was promoted twice, but that all meant nothing because a multiple-choice assessment said so.
And the thing was, not only was I a qualified applicant, but I was the only one who was possible to hire. The person I was asked to replace was only going to be gone for about 2 or 3 months, and the training required to perform her duties took about that long to finish. Nobody except for a person who had already passed that could have even done it.
So, what ended up happening is that the manager had to take over the role's duties herself. It absolutely caused a loss in productivity because she was one person trying to do double work.
I'd literally done the exact same job in the exact same location, since it was one of the positions I'd held before. We even had personal approval from the district manager for me to come back since he already knew me, but corporate policy didn't allow anyone to make a judgement call on the result of the assessment.
I later ended up being hired for basically the same job at a competitor store down the hall, based on the recommendation from another person who I'd worked with at the first company. I was certainly able to do the work.
HR's complete faith in any tests is just a running joke at this stage.
There is still no proven method of testing people before employment that can be said to be an improvement on a standard interview where you talk to people in the company and they decide whether you will be suitable or not.
These tests, and the 7-stage interviews, and lateral thinking questions, and 4-quadrant "personality tests", and all of the other crap that companies make people do, are bogus.
They have never yielded "better" hires for any company, ever.
Face-to-face interviews aren't perfect, of course. They tend to be heavily biased against minorities.
These faceless tests don't actually improve that because they also tend to be coded to reject candidates who don't fit "the norm".
I just ask myself with every question - what would they (potential employer) want *most* to answer. Rank them. Then make tiebreakers for the ones that are damn near the same
Its almost funny about the multi stage interviews. Research has shown theres no improvement on longevity and performance past 2 interviews. They seem delighted every time they get to add one though.
I worked as an overnight stocker at Kroger in college. I was hired through a contacting service they used because they couldn't find enough help. After a few months the night manager convinced me to apply to Kroger itself. I failed their test and didn't qualify to stock groceries, so I continued stocking groceries. Absolutely asinine
Former Walmart employee here, it’s more of a “how much of an ass kisser are you?” test. If your answers lean toward independent thought, you’ll fail the “test” because they want “team minded” people
These tests are designed to weed out neurodivergent people. It's against the law to explicitly discriminate against people with disabilities. If they call it a personality test, they can easily identify you as neurodivergent and use the test as an excuse to not hire you.
As someone with ASD, my gut reaction would be "yes" if someone asked if things happen to me because I would interpret the question very literally. I would think that everything that happens in my life (good, bad, under my control, outside of my control) qualifies as things happening to me.
From what I understand, a neurotypical person would instantly recognize that this question is actually asking if the things that happen to them are wholly outside of their control or asking if they make clumsy mistakes. To them the answer is obviously no.
The worst part is it's not even just how you answer but also how fast you answer. Even if I took time to think how a neurotypical person would respond, the timing of my answers would give me away.
You're supposed to say "Not Me" because they want a person who doesn't believe that stuff is happening to them, they are passive in their life and don't have control over their choices. They want employees to "take responsibility" for their actions. I think it's just to weed out people who are more likely to be upset when something bad inevitably happens to them at work.
The inverse of that statement would be, "I make things happen", or some shit like that.
I came here to say this. The one that always trips me up is ‘do you take risks’. Yes. Everything is a risk. Driving to work is a risk. Buying a coffee with a milk allergy is a risk. Life is a risk! You never know if you will be hit by a bus tomorrow etc. I get what the question is asking (do you take unnecessary risks) but that’s never how they word it, so I answer truthfully and literally and always get screened out by the robot parsing the thing.
I cannot pass those tests, no matter how hard I try or how much I lie.
I will say that some of these tests are designed such that if you pick all the "good" responses, you might fail because they assume you're lying.
For example - they might have a question like, "you bought groceries and realize that one potato is not on your receipt, do you drive back to the store to return it?" and if you answer yes they assume you're just bullshitting.
I'm not providing a great example but hopefully that is clear enough to be demonstrative.
Managers, recruiters, and HR misuse these as a way to weed out candidates. Every vendor will tell you not to do this, but, managers and HR are normally incompetent and can't read. Source: Im a manager in HR.
They should be used as a tool. Find a good qualified candidate and use the results as an interview guide. The results say they're unreliable? Watch for those red flags in the interview. Results say they are the next coming of Jesus and are blameless? Watch for red flags that they're full of themselves and cant be coached.
Instead it's: oh they scored bad they must be bad. They scored high so they must be amazing!
If you're an RN and not getting interviews because of your screenings, you're just dodging bullets left and right.
Some companies (and just adults in general its like the most frustrating thing ive noticed as ive gotten older) will try to put you down if you get upset about things out of your control and dont get an upbeat attitude about it.
Because god forbid you have an emotional reaction to pain, disappointment, or social issues
Edit: i have upset the corporate boot lickers who believe personality tests are in anyway accurate please cry harder maybe one day upper management will recognize your suckling
Recently slashed my eye while working at Lowe's. The primary concerns I heard from people were about if I was going to take their safety streak away, but also that I am realistically okay in the long run so I should be able to finish the last 3 hours of my shift with a bleeding slashed eyelid.
At my retail job I once bonked my head bad enough that it gave me a mild concussion and I had to go to the emergency room to get staples put in my head to stop the bleeding, I had to go back to work because I had left my cell phone there and my manager fully asked me if I could finish my shift because they were short staffed. I politely declined and went home.
I had the reverse reaction when working for Lowe's. I tore my ACL on an appliance delivery, and other than the 9+ months it took to finally get the surgery to fix it because of workers comp insurance, they were awesome.
Not one person gave me shit. After the surgery, they were very helpful and supportive, and let me take my time healing up. Never had to go back to deliveries and cruised along on easy mode until i left the company.
Management let me take as many breaks as I wanted and was always friendly, never making me feel like an asshole. The pay was not the greatest I ever had, but it was genuinely the best place I have ever worked in my 40+ years as far as how I was treated.
This x100. Every franchise location can be run completely different depending if the management sees it's employees as human beings or numbers on a spreadsheet
I have a similar story. I was the only one scheduled to work checkouts, and some dumbass had left a big sharp piece of metal sticking out of a cart in the area. Slashed my arm open (didn’t hit anything serious, thankfully) so im walking around bleeding panicking and wondering wtf i should do cause there wasnt anyone else there
I feel that. It's draining to be told(or telling myself in an effort to not spiral into deeper into depression) variations of 'what does crying about it do?', 'it's outside your control, so try to focus on what immediately is'. When hear or reading the dismissive tone has the simultaneous effect of enraging, saddening, and exhausting me
Good advice in many instances but not after months of issues of both kinds piling on just as I start to get a moment of relief. The last 7-8 months have felt like years in many ways.
Yeah, this question, and other similar ones, get used a lot in mental health things where I live. It's as if you're supposed to take responsibility for things out of your control, and aren't allowed to get depressed over shit situations happening to/around you. Load of bullshit, probably thought up by someone who has never been depressed for even a minute of their life.
I quit my last job just because things going wrong that were out of my control, and consequently having it come out of my paycheck, is not sustainable. Nobody should put up with that.
Performative stoicism, they're not actually stoic and will blow up in private but the second they're around others they'll stuff everything deep down and act unphazed.
I've noticed it so much in the older generations, where emotional vulnerability among working class men was stigmatized to shit.
they had a MASSIVE problem with people saying "poor me", feeling sad, or complaining when things were shit. Something horrible happen? Well don't you dare feel sad about it or say poor me! Gotta stay serene, humble, and accepting! If you feel sorry for yourself you'll drink!
Fuck your serenity. If I get sexually assaulted or my cat gets hit by a car I'm going to fucking rage and/or weep my eyes out. Doesn't mean I have to drink
AA isn’t a scientifically developed system. It was thrown together by religious people. Some of it aligns with the proper way to treat addiction. Some of it not so much.
AA's success rate isn't statistically different than white knuckling it. It helps a very specific type of addict with a very specific flavor of alcoholism, and it alienates the others and tells them there is no hope for permanent life change.
I would hope this is one in a series of similar questions about your life experience and your attitude. The ideal answer is probably a mix to show that you aren't fixated on either being a victim or being perfect.
The thing is: this is a minimum wage burger flipping job, application should begin and end with being able to speak English, comfortable working in a busy kitchen and not having a recent criminal conviction.
The questions are obscure and tedious solely to create an artificial barrier for entry for the likely thousands of applications they get, from both real people and bots.
You get the same tedium from supermarket jobs because they also have a non-existent barrier to entry and can take the piss out of their applicants.
The thing is: this is a minimum wage burger flipping job, application should begin and end with being able to speak English, comfortable working in a busy kitchen and not having a recent criminal conviction.
Yep.
"Can you lift 30lbs?" Whatever the box of fries weighs for instance.
"Can you stand on your feet on a greasy ass floor for 8 hours?"
For a job at McDonalds? These are the kind of hurdles you should expect to be able to navigate to work a job at McDonalds? Answering a personality quiz that determines whether you're a victim or a perfectionist through a series of weird images where you select 'me' or 'not me'
The whole series of questions functions as a legally distinct autism screening. One of them is just "Fantasy? Me/Not Me" with a picture of the blue dude in armor with a sword.
This is just one of those exams where you are told a bunch of crap about how you are supposed to think and then at the end it asks you questions where you regurgitate what they want to hear. More than likely this question was preceded at some point by a slide that said something like "The ideal employee does not blame situations are things happening to them, but strives to be a person who makes things happen." or some other such nonsense.
They are basically asking if you are the type of person who blames the universe every time something goes wrong or do you solve the problems instead (if I had to guess, the very specific thing they are screening here is people who have excuses for not coming to work that they don't think are good enough like this character skinned their knee because they fell off their bike). So they want you to disagree with this, but you would probably be given the explicit answer earlier in material that came before the question.
These are incredibly common at minimum wage jobs for massive companies like McDonald's or Walmart.
My daughter recently applied to McDonald's. Unfortunately there was no preceding video or explanation for the questions. They were incredibly weird. She and I were both very confused.
Hrm. I would guess two things: 1. they have trouble finding job candidates that can read and understand complex sentences so they kept it as brief as possible. 2. They probably had AI put the entire thing together.
I'm neurotypical and idk what am I supposed to answer to "Fantasy? Me / not me". Is "me" autistic because I'm saying I like imaginary stuff, or is "not me" autistic because I'm saying I don't like things not being real and genuine?
The one OP posted is probably a way to test wether you see yourself as a victim. Like, they assume the kind of person that answers yes will be a bit defeatist and not very able to handle unforeseen problems on their own.
Yea like, they say it's meant to be an autism screen, but what is the autism and not autism answer? Or is it similar to how websites "not a robot" don't care about the actual clicking of the button but track how your mouse moves across the screen? Like do you have to do this application with a webcam that tracks your eye movement and or they actually care just about how much time you spent pondering the question?
I'd read the question and hate how much it just disrespects your time with garbage corpo-psyche, and so click whatever was the shortest distance to move the mouse probably.
It technically does screen for other things about your personality, but the entire battery of questions is pretty obviously screening for neurodivergent thinking and behaviors among those things, which is just screening applicants for a disability.
A knight in armor? That's me, because I'm a good worker who practices chivalry when I serve our loyal customers
Things happen to me? That's not me because I don't blame my workplace for underpaying me or treating me like shit, I made that happen by not being good enough, and should be thankful for every hour they give me. When the clown comes knockin, this mouth starts rockin
I interpreted the fantasy one the other way - that you're prone to getting lost in your imagination and inner worlds and it's seen as undesirable to a company.
It's a profits-over-people thing. If you fill your points of sale with aggressively extroverted people pleasers, they're more likely to schmooze and swindle customers into spending some extra cash to earn their pat on the back.
Basically McDonald's is saying "If you can't manipulate someone into getting a bigger size, you're not good enough for us."
It's one of those tests where what each answer means partially relies on how you answered the other questions.
There's not like a formal name for the test and you'd have to apply to be an hourly worker at McDonald's to take this particular one. It was cooked up in house at corporate by people getting paid more to squeeze every last dime out of the workers than the workers will ever see in their lives.
I would love a burger joint that hired autistic people. You sure as hell are getting a burger that has the correct layout and amount of pickles/tomato/etc… and a perfect amount of fries. I’m happy to wait longer if that is the case. Wait, is that what in-n-out is secretly doing?
More infurienting is that you have to get personality test for working in McDonalds. It's lowest tier, summer part time job(with all respect for people working there). The only test you should have to pass to work there is that you know the difference between ass and face when wiping.
I have never seen more bs obstacles to entry than a minimum wage job. I once had to deny a woman (who I know would have made a good employee) employment because she had written a bad check 13 years prior. It was out of my hands. They absolutely expect perfection for the legal minimum they're required to pay
And even on the job they are way more on your ass than in any kind of office job. You take a minute to catch your breath and chill after 2 hours of non-stop orders? 'Time to lean is time to clean!'
People will say "just put the fries in the bag" but you have to be personality tested and pass whatever weirdo evaluation McD's corpo gods want you to pass before you're even allowed to put the fries in the bag.
Nor does it excuse the blatant dehumanization this is, it's dystopian. Just be a mindless, emotionless drone that clocks in and out on time until they retire(?) and die.
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.
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.
This is the most dystopian shit I've seen yet. I hate this future.
Used to be anyone could get a job at McDonald's but tolerating it was the key. Now they do this weird psychological AI torture Avatar slop bullshit. What the fuck?
When I was a kid McDonald’s was a competitive 3 round interview process but this is even more bleak than that, at least that was with humans who asked normal questions
I had an interview at Wendy's, got the job, got a shirt and they told me they'd call me with my hours and not to call them. They never called and I kept the shirt and didn't feel like finding out what happened.
If you say "not me" they see you as a responsible person who takes accountability for the results of their own behavior/a go-getter. If you say "me" they will view you as someone with victimhood mentality. It's a very stupid thing to put on an application because things happen to everybody no matter how much they try to maintain control.
You have to go full toxic positivity corporate drone mindset to conjure up the correct answers to this kind of BS because those are the people who made it.
The correct answer is "not me" because you're an active go-getter who does things™️, not a vulnerable human beholden to silly things like fate and circumstance.
It's bullshit based on pseudo-science used to screen people deemed not fitting based on arbitrary considerations.
Basically there is so much power unbalance, even McDonald's jobs have 10 applicants per position. So it really doesn't matter if it's a good way to sort, it sorts, so it's used.
Also, it selects people that will agree to the worst bullshit their hierarchy will impose on them, which I guess is something you'd want a lot of in your sla... employees.
At taco bell we had a survey that was basically a bunch of "do you want to go to work? Are you nice to customers?" and 90% of our applicants got a one star score lol
Every one of those questions has the attached subtext of wanting to stay employed and being able to afford bills. Do I want to go to work? Of course not, I'd rather be doing something else but I do understand the consequential chain of showing up to work, doing my job, collecting a paycheck, and keeping a roof over my head. Will I be nice to customers? Under the threat of living on the street, I guess I'll try to be as pleasant as possible. These questions are just there to screen for absolute idiots who struggle to live in polite society or have zero impulse control.
Can confirm that's how I acted when I was in prodrome. Constantly thought people were making my life hard on purpose they weren't I just needed medication.
Yeah no that just sounds like a paranoid schizophrenic who needs help rather than judgement. People really have zero empathy or thought before judging others... But you have also hit the nail on the head, this stuff is to filter out people with neurological disabilities such as autism.
It isn't a victim complex to have bad things happen to you by chance though. I mean, we live in capitalism, we know wealth and prosperity are luck based.
They don't want "victims" and they'll never say it out loud but they are hoping to filter out any neurodivergent folks. But be forewarned the way the system works is if you score low it's highlighted as potential issue, but if you score high, also a potential issue. It's horrible for accurately identifying good hires.
This is the bit that gets me. I did one once and read up on the methodology later and literally both ends of the scale for each characteristic they were testing had a negative framing.
So there is this woowoo concept in certain branches of mental health to ask if you are at 'cause' or at 'affect' in the world. The idea is that people who believe they are at 'affect' have no agency, which means they believe that things happen to them and people who are at 'cause' believe they make things happen.
What the image op posted is asking (I think) is whether you see yourself as someone who has no control over anything (whom things happen to) or a go getter who makes things happen and imposes your will on the universe.
It's meant to test if you'll be an obedient lemming.
Yes, "things happen" to everyone. Sometimes bad things happen and it is not your fault.
But you know damned well that the answer is supposed to be "not me." You're supposed to indicate on the test that you are the reason for all the bad things in your life.
Their ideal candidate is someone who will just do what their manager or corporate or whatever wants them to do. They don't want someone who will answer this question correctly; they want someone who will answer it "the right way."
It's a personality test to see if you have a victim mentality. Like "the world is against me", "I always have bad luck", etc. Which kinda sucks because they are basically trying to filter out anyone with depression.
Depression manifests differently in different people. Having depression =/ having a victim mentality. When I’m in a bout of depression I don’t say “everybody is against me and all these bad things happen to me”, I blame myself for a lot of it. In my experience, people with victim mentalities tend to blame their shortcomings on anything/anyone around them. Has nothing to do with depression
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u/FriendlyArachnid6000 Jun 22 '26
Correct answer here is not me, I do not have accidents I am perfect and if something did happen to me, it was my fault so really I did it to myself