One of my more recent interviews was at a midsized firm that did toxic tort defense. The interview started out normally enough; I spoke with 2 partners, each one alternating asking a question or adding a minor bit of information. At some point, one partner asked about why I did not go directly from college to law school and what I did in the intervening time. Paraphrasing a bit, I told them why I didn’t go directly (originally looking at other grad programs) and that I worked crap jobs in the interim. The second partner asked something unrelated to that topic, the first partner decided this was some sort of sticking point. Where had I worked, in what city… his questions started doubling back as if he thought I would change my answers. It became strange how fixated he was on the couple trivial non-legal jobs nearly forever ago (and no.. wrong type of firm to have had any business with them at all). This went on for probably 10 minutes. The other partner shot me a strangely apologetic look at one point silently voicing that she too thought the other partner was being weird.
Walking out of that interview I had an overwhelming feeling that the partner had decided I had spent the time in question in prison and was trying to hide it by claiming to work in retail (which isn’t that far off from prison I suppose).