Coffee shop interview question has stumped most Google candidates, says ex-employee

There's nothing worse than being sat in an interview with sweaty palms and a pit in your stomach while your potential new boss asks you a baffling question.

We're not talking your usual 'give us example of working in a team' or 'what is your greatest achievement' - we mean a downright riddle that is more difficult to solve than a Rubik's Cube.

That's apparently the kind of stuff candidates vying for a job at Google were asked during the interview process.

Take a look at this:

Steve Jobs had his 'beer test' to recruit the best of the best to work at Apple and the search engine had what can only be described as a coffee conundrum.

A woman, who claims to have previously worked for Google, Wix, and Rocket Money as a Chief People Officer (AKA the Head of HR), shared a TikTok explaining one of the toughest questions interviewers would apparently ask while interrogating candidates.

She said this particular line of enquiry managed to 'stump' the majority of the tech giant's prospective employees while weeding out the good from the great.

The social media user, who goes by @hrbitch online, outlined the bizarre question to her followers.

She explained: "There’s a coffee shop in San Francisco. It has unlimited supply and demand - meaning it has all the coffee beans, coffee cups, teas in the world and the customer line wraps around the block.

"The coffee shop is roughly 500-square feet. So, how many cups of coffee can this coffee shop produce in one day?"

TikTok/@hrbitch

I mean, you can picture the look a candidate must have had on their face when the interviewer asked that.

I think, 'Pardon me?' would be the only thing I could muster up as a response.

Loads of people on TikTok had their own theories about what the 'right' answer was though and they flooded the comment section while sharing their thoughts.

One said: "Zero - no workers were mentioned."

Another wrote: "It takes 30 seconds to pour a cup of coffee. So that's 120 cups every hour. If your open for eight hours, that's 960 cups of coffee."

A third added: "It doesn't matter because the demand will always equal the supply."

Someone else chimed in: "The question is ‘produce’ not serve. The fact that customers wrap around the block is irrelevant. Don’t need cups either."

And a fifth joked: "I don't know, Google it!"

Getty Stock Images

Thankfully, the former Google employee did put people out of their misery and revealed what the 'answer' was - and brace yourself, but basically... there isn't one.

According to the woman, it's all a bit of an elaborate mind game which shows off your problem solving and decision making skills without you realising.

She said: "There are no right or wrong answers, the interviewer's just trying to figure out your thought process. That's why they made it vague, to understand your decision making skills."

The good news is, Google has since scrapped their mind-bending brainteasers from the interview process, according to the search engine's careers site.

The tech firm explains: "Our data showed that brainteaser questions didn’t predict how well someone would do on the job so we no longer ask them. Instead, we do work sample tests and ask structured interview questions.

"In the end, we want above all to assess your skills and see if you and this role are a match (there aren’t any brain teasers, and who knows, you might even have some fun)."

I'll bet it's not as much fun as the interviewers must have had while watching nervous candidates start calculating cups of coffee though.