Here's how the conversation went— I asked an interview question and he asked me to repeat myself. I did. Then he answered my question with a completely non-sequitur statement. I was suspicious but thought, "well, maybe he didn't feel comfortable answering my question." Though, there was nothing prying about the question. I was hopeful.

Later, he told me that call center agents have to multi-task; they have to know how to be pleasant, take the customer's information down accurately, offer sales and take orders all at the same time. I offered the idea that perhaps it's best to focus on one item at a time, so as not to encourage errors. To this he replied, "In this day in age, you've got to be a multi-tasker. Why, right now, I've been checking and answering my email while talking to you."

Bells and all types of buzzers went off in my head. I wanted to say, "You were what?!?" But I held my ground. From that point forward, I didn't intend on putting too much emphasis on what came out of this interview and decided it was probably time to wrap the whole thing up in a casual way. I had other interviews that I could draw information from, so this wasn't a huge loss. I thought it was interesting though and perhaps something worth mentioning. Not listening to the person that is interviewing you, can make them insulted and, furthermore, cause them to deem the information that you provided inappropriate and unnecessary.

If you're not listening to the person who's talking to you, it's probably a good idea to tell them that you're busy and will call them back when you can give them your full attention.

Here's an actual device that is not on the market as of yet (I think) but could be a tool used in the future for many VoIP applications. Be careful if you do choose to pretend you're listening to someone they might have a Jerk-o-meter downloaded on their cell phone or VoIP phone.

--Amy Ouzoonian