[ks]

From the article:

"Sir, are you sure you want stack loaves of bread here at Trader Joe’s? Yes, I really do. Well, we’ve decided to hire the 24 year-old woman with purple hair and nose piercings instead."

He tried to get more traditional jobs, but they don't want him.

[larrys]

Jobs are hard to find. No doubt. But the truth is of course the manager at Trader Joe's knows he's not going to stick around for a long time. If you do hiring (in a traditional business) you will always run across people who are desperate and overqualified. They will tell you anything and everything to get the job. But a business is not a charity it's a business. And it needs to hire the person that (from experience) will stick around more than a short period of time. Doesn't mean the manager was right about him. But we have to assume that his judgement was based on what he ran into in the past in similar situations.

And the example he is giving is for dramatic effect anyway. We have no statistics on how many jobs he applied for that he was overqualified for but more on the mark that made sense for the person hiring (like writing for priceonomics on a per article basis).

[VLM]

"knows he's not going to stick around for a long time."

Why? I worked my way thru school in retail and then a short stint in retail management (long enough to learn I'm not doing that for a living if there's any way to avoid it...)

So our annual turnover rate ranged from 100% to 200% and this was not considered noteworthy in the biz. Retail is not like working for Ma Bell for 40 years and retiring in place. This dude was unemployed and/or homeless for what, like 5 years, at what point do you think a retail manager will think, hmm, he's been unemployed 10 times longer than the average employee lasts here, maybe, just maybe, he's going to stick around?

The other pure bogosity is I actually worked retail management and my three favorite employees were a carpenter and two accountants. God knows he wouldn't be the first dude trying to work a second job part time nights to make ends meet, and managers love to hire a guy (or woman) who the boyz will look up to as something of a parental figure or at least older bro figure (basically they were team leads working under me). High school kids were a dime a dozen but the store really rose or fell based on the adults...

You never, ever hire some high school or college student slacker if you can get a real dude with a real work ethic. Strange claims from people who haven't been there, while I have been there, strike a discordant tone.

Gotta be some "other" issues. Such as maybe 100 other applicants in the same situation who did get hired. Perhaps this "Rosanne" show writer didn't get hired because they hired a dude from the "Cosby show" or 100 other guys in the same situation.

I guarantee he didn't get hired because the kids would obey him like a parent, or because he had too intense of a work ethic, or too much life experience, or too focused on the prize aka paycheck.

[auctiontheory]

But the truth is of course the manager at Trader Joe's knows he's not going to stick around for a long time.

You're right on average. Interestingly, one of the part-timers at my local (Menlo Park) Trader Joe's is apparently a retired multi-millionaire tech entrepreneur. He does it just to be around friendly people for part of his day.