How to Discreetly Pass Gas During a Job Interview

Last Updated on August 21, 2025 by Michael

They don’t teach this at Harvard Business School.

Know why? Because Harvard Business School is built on the lie that humans are professional entities who exist above biological functions. That we’re all just walking LinkedIn profiles in suits, discussing KPIs and synergy while our bodies politely pause all digestive processes between 9 and 5.

What a crock.

You’re sitting there, three questions deep into explaining your “greatest strength” (lying, apparently), when your intestines decide to recreate the brass section of the London Symphony Orchestra. Your stomach makes a sound that could be morse code for “HELP ME.” The interviewer pauses mid-sentence about company culture.

This is it. This is how you die.

Breakfast: Where Everything Went Wrong

Let’s talk about your crimes. You woke up this morning and ate food with… flavor? Texture? The ability to be digested?

Rookie. Absolute amateur hour.

Know what successful people eat before interviews? Nothing. Know what unsuccessful people eat? Also nothing, but for different reasons. The point is, on interview day, you consume substances that barely qualify as matter. Rice that tastes like disappointment. Water that’s angry about being water. Maybe, if you’re feeling dangerous, a cracker that died in 1987.

Things That Will Betray You:

• Coffee (oh, you NEED your coffee? Your colon needs it more)
• That protein bar you think is healthy
• Eggs (what are you, training for a marathon? Sit down)
• Yogurt (probiotics are just bacteria waiting to riot)
• Anything Amy from HR brought in
• Smoothies (liquid disaster)
• Fiber (today is NOT the day to be regular)
• Existence itself

You should basically eat like you’re about to go into suspended animation. Like you’re preparing for space travel but the spaceship is a conference room and the mission is not destroying your life.

Your Options, Ranked by Desperation

Advanced Warfare Tactics

Coughing: The Coward’s Symphony

You’re gonna cough. Of course you’re gonna cough. It’s the first thing everyone thinks of, which should tell you something about its effectiveness.

Here’s the problem: timing. You need the reflexes of a ninja, the timing of a Swiss watch, and the acting skills of someone who didn’t just violate the Geneva Convention. Too early? Suspicious. Too late? You just highlighted the incident like a forensic investigator at a crime scene.

“Excuse me, I just—” COUGH COUGH

Yeah, they know. The janitor knows. That guy interviewing three rooms over knows. Your future children know.

Death by Office Chair

Fact: Every office chair manufactured after 1982 sounds like it’s being tortured. This is your only friend in a hostile world.

Start moving like you’ve got a beehive in your slacks. Shift forward when they talk about “growth opportunities.” Lean back when they mention “competitive salary” (competitive with what, poverty?). Swivel with the enthusiasm of someone who definitely doesn’t have gastrointestinal distress.

Make that chair sing the song of its people. If anyone asks, you’re just “really engaged” with their description of the dental plan.

The Pen Drop Method (For Optimists)

You’re going to “accidentally” drop your pen. Original? No. Effective? Also no. But you’re committed now.

The problem is escalation. One pen drop? Nervous candidate. Two? Concerning. Three? They’re Googling “early onset Parkinson’s” while you’re still talking. By the fourth pen, they’re wondering if you’re having a medical emergency or if this is some kind of performance art.

Actually, lean into it. Make it performance art. “This represents the fragility of the modern workplace.” They won’t hire you, but they might give you an arts grant.

The Hail Mary Phone Vibration

Your phone isn’t on vibrate. It’s sitting there, face up, screen black, deader than your chances of getting this job. But you’re gonna pretend it just buzzed.

“Oh, sorry! Thought I had it on silent!”

The interviewer looks at your clearly dormant phone. You look at your clearly dormant phone. God looks at your clearly dormant phone and wonders where humanity went wrong.

This is your life now.

DEFCON 1: Abandon Ship Protocols

There’s regular gas, and then there’s what your body is currently producing, which could probably violate international chemical weapons treaties.

Signs it’s time to fake your own death:

• The interviewer’s nose hairs are visibly wilting
• Someone suggested “maybe we should evacuate”
• The smoke alarm is confused
• Plants are dying in real-time
• You can taste colors
• The interviewer just texted someone “help”
• Birds are falling from the sky outside

Stand up. Announce your grandmother is on fire. Or your car is drowning. Or you just remembered you’re violently allergic to Tuesdays.

Just. Leave.

An Uncomfortable Truth Bomb

You want to know something that’ll blow your mind? (Besides your colon, obviously.)

That interviewer? The one in the $3,000 suit asking about your “experience with cross-functional teams”? They’ve been there. Their boss has been there. The CEO whose motivational quotes are plastered all over LinkedIn? Definitely been there. Probably during a board meeting. Probably while firing someone.

The entire corporate structure is built on the mutual delusion that we’re not all just barely-evolved apes in business casual, pretending our bodies don’t regularly betray us in humiliating ways.

We put men on the moon but we can’t admit that sometimes our butts make noise. Make it make sense.

Why This Matters (It Doesn’t)

You know what’s insane? The economic impact of fart anxiety. Someone, somewhere, is getting paid six figures to design “acoustically advantageous” office furniture. There’s probably a German word for the specific type of fear you feel when your stomach gurgles during a PowerPoint presentation.

Entire industries exist because we can’t just say “excuse me” and move on like adults.

If aliens are watching us (they are), they’re probably like, “They invented democracy but can’t handle digestive democracy? Pathetic.”

Tomorrow’s Game Plan (You’re Screwed)

So. Tomorrow you’re walking into that interview armed with:

1. A stomach full of nothing
2. The confidence of someone who Googled “how to not fart during interview”
3. This guide
4. Crippling anxiety
5. Extra pens (rookie)

Look, statistically speaking, you’ll be fine. Your body will probably cooperate. Probably. Maybe.

But if it doesn’t?

If you somehow get hired after essentially tear-gassing your future colleagues, you’ve won. You’ve achieved the impossible. You’re the person who turned chemical warfare into a job offer. That’s a superpower. A terrible, terrible superpower, but still.

They’ll have to put it in your onboarding materials. “Dave’s the one who… you know… during his interview. Real go-getter though!”

The Part Where This Gets Weird(er)

Here’s what nobody tells you: if they hire you after you’ve committed what’s essentially a war crime in their conference room, that’s the most honest relationship you’ll ever have with an employer.

No pretense. No fake “we’re a family” BS. Just the mutual understanding that you’re both human disasters trying to make it through the day without anyone noticing.

That’s beautiful, in a really messed up way.

Or they’re desperate. Really, really desperate.

Either way, dental insurance!

Final Thoughts from the Abyss

Every career guide says “be authentic.”

Those guides never specify what to do when your authentic self includes a digestive system that sounds like a dying walrus trying to communicate with its ancestors.

But here’s the secret nobody wants to admit: everyone’s authentic self is a disaster. That interviewer pretending to care about your five-year plan? Disaster. The CEO? Disaster with a yacht. The janitor? Actually, they’re pretty cool, but still—disaster.

We’re all just disasters in different tax brackets, pretending our bodies don’t occasionally revolt against us.

So tomorrow, when you’re sitting in that conference room, stomach churning like a washing machine full of bad decisions, remember: somewhere, someone became a billionaire after absolutely destroying a bathroom at Goldman Sachs.

And they probably give TED talks about “resilience” now.

Circle of life. Or circle of something.

Good luck out there. You’re gonna need it. We all are.