> Very common problem: interviewers asking questions about who was going to take care of the kids.
Not to excuse this, but it made me think of a rather terrible mistake I recently made, which I am glad has not come back to bite me. I was the last interviewer for a guy who was Jewish and didn't use technology on the Sabbath. As I was walking him back to the lobby I mused out loud that that was interesting since we have pager duty and I wonder what other teams do in that situation, since surely we wouldn't be the only team at the company who employed someone with that or similar restrictions. It wasn't until my wife pointed out to me that that was probably completely illegal and could have had serious repercussions for me that I thought I had done anything but muse about something meaningless out loud.
Sometimes people just don't think, I guess is my point.
Evaluating the benefits of legislation should take into account the cognitive burden it places on everyone in the country, could have been your point.
(This since I notice you are taking the tack that the problem was the unlawfulness of what you were doing: if you believe that your behavior was actually intrinsically immoral, you don't mention it.)
I doubt that this is illegal, but it is the kind of thing that can get lawyers involved.
It's much better, one can say with hindsight, to say something like "Just so you are sure, I'll make sure this point about no tech on the Sabbath doesn't count against a good candidate like yourself, actually I think it's great to be able to regularly get your head out of your job, but this doesn't fit with how we are working here. If you get the job, you'll need to be active in figuring out how to make sure that things that are your responsibility can be dealt with by other team members if something urgent comes up then."
Not to excuse this, but it made me think of a rather terrible mistake I recently made, which I am glad has not come back to bite me. I was the last interviewer for a guy who was Jewish and didn't use technology on the Sabbath. As I was walking him back to the lobby I mused out loud that that was interesting since we have pager duty and I wonder what other teams do in that situation, since surely we wouldn't be the only team at the company who employed someone with that or similar restrictions. It wasn't until my wife pointed out to me that that was probably completely illegal and could have had serious repercussions for me that I thought I had done anything but muse about something meaningless out loud.
Sometimes people just don't think, I guess is my point.