Trevor’s story

Our friend Trevor is a very interesting man with a wealth of stories about his childhood in India, his career in the RAF and his travels around the world. We met him and our friend Tim in the pub tonight and as usual we spoke about all sorts of things. We began to talk about the new pub that Thatcher’s cider company has opened in a village near here called Sandford. Whenever I hear the name Sandford I think of the film Hot Fuzz. Tim hasn’t seen it and Trevor hasn’t heard of it. I talked about it, and mentioned the episode with the swan.

Trevor then told us a story about a swan. When in the RAF he was involved in various interviews for candidates for various positions, and some of the interviews presented scenarios to the candidates which they had to explain what they would do in a particular situation. Trevor gave us an example of what was given to a candidate,with the follow up question ‘What would you do?’

Here is the situation:

You are driving a friend to the station to catch a train to London for a very, very important interview which he must not be late for, let alone miss completely. As you drive along a country road, a swan flies across in front of you and you hit it. You stop and get out of the car and rush back to the animal. It is badly injured, but not dead nor near death. What do you do… remember your friend has to catch his train!

Whatever the candidate answered he would be quizzed on. For example, if he said he would catch the swan and take it to a vet after he had taken his friend to the station he would be asked whether he had ever caught a swan, what did he know about swans, how he would catch the injured swan?

At the end,if he asked what the correct answer was he would be told there was no correct answer… it was all about how he answered,and how he argued his case!