It was a bizarre day at work yesterday. We interviewed for my temporary helper. The first interview went with only a minor, non-bizarre hitch, but the second one... well, you hear about it maybe as a joke or urban legend. What happened was this:

The HR person on our panel confided in us that she wondered if she would make it - interviewee wanted to come in at 11 am, rather than 10:45. One of our panel had to leave at 11:30, so to get at least the 45 minutes, HR was insistent - 10:45.

At 10:45, the person was waiting for us. We ushered her into the room, and while we were all standing, introduced ourselves. Interviewee, a woman, introduced herself - and solved the mystery about how we were to pronounce her first name - then said that she had to use the restroom. Fine, the HR person (a woman) escorted her to the restroom, maybe 30 ft from the interview room.

Back in the interview, while we were waiting for the interviewee, we chatted a bit about this and that, listening. DJ friend, who was on the panel, told us about the little whooshing sound people make as they walk on the carpet between the cubicles.

Minutes pass. I make a joke that the interviewee will be interviewing at 11:00 am. But we thought - well, zippers, snaps, putting yourself together, the fact that women have number 3 to deal with, etc. A few minutes after that, the other woman on the panel and I went to the bathroom to check.

Bathroom empty; interviewee gone.

Other woman and I make a cursory pass along the cubicles in case she got lost. I went and chatted with the front door receptionist. She described the interviewee, saw her go in, didn't see her go out.

Oh boy. The four of us on the panel each took a floor to make sure she wasn't hurt, hiding, lost, committing a crime, etc. I took the second floor and chatted with a coworker little about our "runner". Other than the fun fact learning that visitors to Bill Gates' mansion are given a name tag with a GPS unit in it... well, we saw or heard nothing odd or amiss in a bathroom, stairwell, cubicle, office, store room.

Interviewee went poof. The HR person scratched her head. No shows, yes; but she never had anyone bail out at the interview stage before. Someone thought that maybe she thought that she could count us as one of the three contacts/week needed to collect unemployment, but that would mean the definition of contact really stiffened up in the past 15 years.

One thing's for certain - she had a transporter and we didn't.