Students who applied for work at a university-owned bar were asked questions about their SEX lives and made to play a game called ‘sh*g, marry, avoid’.
The undergraduates were waiting for interviews for jobs at a nightclub when they were asked to confess how many sexual partners they’d d had.
Some said the session at The Old Fire Station in Bournemouth, Dorset, which is run by Bournemouth University Students Union, was “fun and engaging”.
But others said it was “discriminatory” and made them feel uncomfortable.
One female student, who asked to remain anonymous, said she was now boycotting the Fire Station after the experience which has left her afraid to apply for other jobs.
She said: “We had to sit in two groups and toss a ball around and if we dropped it we had to say Shag, Marry or Avoid to people in the circle as well as answer any question that was asked from the person throwing the ball.
“Then we had to do another game where one person said something for example, ‘have you ever walked in on your parents having sex?’ and everyone who had had to put their hand up.
“The whole time people who had currently worked at the Fire Station were joining in and making sure people answered.
“I felt uncomfortable with the whole thing and it was obvious if you hadn’t done anything like that that you wouldn’t get the job because it was seen as you weren’t joining in with the game.
“I found it discriminated against the people who hadn’t had sex or didn’t drink.”
But another student, who landed one of the bar jobs, told student paper The Tab he had no problem with the pre-interview session.
He said: “We sat in a group and we had a little squidgy ball.
“You had to throw the ball to someone and ask them a question about themselves and if you had the ball thrown to you and you dropped it, you had to do a forfeit.
“One of the questions a girl got asked is how many people she’d slept with and have you kissed anyone in your flat, that was another one.
“They were all the same sort of questions.”
Another student said: “I thought it was great.
“It wasn’t like getting grilled for an hour and a half about having the right qualifications, it was looking at the personality of people.”
Martin Huntley, assistant manager of the Old Fire Station, defended the game and said it was not part of the interview process.
He said: “That isn’t part of the interview process. That’s something we do to keep them occupied while we are interviewing others.
“They are not obligated to take part in these games. What they do in these games makes no difference in whether they are employed or not.
“If people find things like that inappropriate, then they are well within their rights to remove themselves from the situation.
“We do not force anyone to play these games or tell us how many people they’ve slept with.”
When asked if managers should choose what interviewees have to answer while waiting Martin simply said: “I think that’s a tough thing to police.”
Alan Dove, Marketing and Commercial Manager at the university’s student union, said: “We will always strive to maintain the fun element of our recruitment day and make sure that inappropriate or crass behaviour isn’t part of the day.”