While the interview experience itself was fine, the result was the worst experience I've ever had trying to get a job. In the end, I was given an offer that was dropped more than retracted, and I was just strung along while unemployed.

A third-party recruiter was old friends with the hiring manager, who did a phone interview with me before he brought me in for a face-to-face interview with him, which was easy, non-technical, and went fine. He seemed nice but wishy-washy (later confirmed).

I left his office for an interview with two other people, both engineers, who asked technical questions that weren't too hard. I then took a technical computer test and did fairly well. However, the "buzzer" went off before I was done, and they offered me more time, but I declined. I'd already decided I didn't want the job. Here's why:

I'm a C# .NET coder, and they had VB6 and were intending to migrate to C#. The recruiter and I had an understanding that I had no interest in doing VB6, just the new development. To my surprise, the interview focus had been about me doing VB6 so much that I'd concluded this was a misunderstanding and I wasn't the guy for the job. So I told them so and left cordially.

I told the recruiter this, and he was surprised, so he called the hiring manager to clear it up. The result was Caremark agreed I'd only do C# and SQL and to bring me in for another interview (I had passed, it seems).

The next interview was with two other guys and went very well, being slightly technical but more of a "how would you implement xyz" thing. I passed. I was asked to do a drug test and passed. They told me I had the job, and all signs indicated this. Only the contract was missing.

This all started two months before I'd be available as a consultant when another project ended. As my first day approached, calamity ensued. No contract appeared. Each day the recruiter told me I'd start the next day, but then this got pushed back again and again. I was not making any money now. They knew this. The hiring manager was waffling, going on vacation when only he could sign something, that sort of thing.

After a week of this, a contract finally appeared, but someone at Caremark reduced my hourly rate by several dollars. The recruiter said this should take a day to fix. More like another week of being strung along every day again.

Suddenly, an extra middle manager was brought into the picture, and I was told to go meet with him. It wasn't an interview, just someone trying to decide where I'd be on the project. Imagine my shock when the interviewer told me I no longer had the position (despite a contract having gone out) pending this surprise technical interview. The reason? None, really. He was just taking over for the original hiring manager, who had been unable to make a decision on whether the entire project was happening or not.

After this interview, which I passed, I was again told an offer was still coming and everything was fine. It wasn't, as I was losing my third week of income. In another couple days, I finally gave up and moved on without saying anything, but very furious. I ended up being out of work for seven weeks because of them (I thought the job was all set and hadn't been looking, and it took a month to find something else - my mistake).

They never came back with an offer and just let the whole thing fall apart. The recruiter told me a month later that they'd frozen hiring, as if I cared anymore. He was unhappy, too, since he hadn't gotten paid.

Almost a year after the whole thing started, the recruiter called and said they had moved forward and were looking for people and if I was interested. I wasn't really, but gave him the resume just to see what happened. That was two months ago, and I've heard nothing except "no word yet."

How would you decide which design pattern to use?