Hello—you're hired!

[Bud] Sagendorf had been a resident of Santa Monica since age 3, living with his widowed mother and older sister. The mother had moved there from Washington state after her husband died. She opened a beauty shop. Sagendorf's sister worked at a stationery store and guess where Segar bought his supplies? When she told [E.C.] Segar [creator of Popeye] of her brother's interest in cartooning, Segar invited him over to the house. Soon he hired Sagendorf as his assistant doing lettering and backgrounds. He asked Sagendorf only two questions before he was hired: Did he like fishing, and what type of books did he read? Sagendorf's answer to the first question was yes and 'science fiction' to the latter, and Segar enjoyed both—probably the fastest job interview in history. (Segar had already seen the young man's drawings, so he knew he could draw). —Ed Black's Cartoon Flashback

In the history of job interviews, this was one of the shortest. [Dreamgirls director Michael Bennett] was in an empty rehearsal room and I was brought in to meet him. He looked at me and asked, "Are you quiet?" "Yes," I said. "What sign are you?" "Scorpio," I said. "Oh, no, no, no," he said, ending the conversation. I must have looked utterly crestfallen because he looked at me again and gave me one of his impish smiles and said, "All right." And that was it, I was in. —Manhattan User's Guide