I loved interviewing people when I worked in HR, mostly because of the odd nervous habits people had. It was my comic relief on busy days. There was always the pen wiggler/ tapper. And the "um' guy that can't pull together a sentence without, uh, several, er, filler {cough} words.
It became less entertaining as the positions became more senior. Except for the occasional obligatory interview of an executive's friend or relative. You never knew what to expect with those, sometimes top notch stars and other times, well, thoroughly pitiful.
One was a large, sweaty man who vigorously rubbed his hands over his immense thighs forward and back, forward and back. My hands began to sweat just thinking of the carpet burn he was developing on his palms.
My nervous habit is cracking my knuckles. It is a problem I have had to work really hard at curbing, especially in Corporate America. It wasn't until I got my very own office that I fell off the wagon; I began cracking on the clock again. I did it while checking messages, with my door shut. I did it in elevators. I did it in the restroom and cafeteria. I couldn't stop.
My boss had the privilege of leading a national HR call one morning. I took that call from my office so I could multi-task during the call while on muted speaker phone. He was running through the agenda as I sat back and began with knuckle number one. I slowly moved on to knuckles two and three, stopping only to sip my beverage. There was a moment of silence on the call, I wondered if my phone got disconnected.
He began speaking again. I completed that hand moved onto the next. Another pause on the call, more silence. I wondered if he lost track of where he was on the agenda. I snacked on some chips and the cracking proceeded. With the tenth knuckle and another long pause on the NATIONAL conference call, I realized I had forgotten to mute the freaking phone. People across the country patiently listened to me crack every single knuckle over the course of about 10 minutes.
His office was directly across the hall from mine. I hope he never peeked around his computer to see it was me.
