What if you applied for a job--only to learn the job was a bank heist?

You've got to give this bank robber points for ingenuity and ambition.

But, yes, yes, it's a terrible thing, and I hope he's caught.

But still... a cautionary tale for anyone answering any classified ads where someone tells you how to dress and asks you to show up in front of a bank. Looking at it that way, knowing the outcome, it does sound suspicious, but I admit, if I had been in these unemployed persons shoes, I'll bet I'd have fallen for it, too. Why not? Who would think...?

OK, so here's what happened earlier this week: A Craigslist ad featured a job opening for a road maintenance project in Monroe, Washington, and anyone interested should meet near the Bank of America in Monroe at 11 a.m. on a Tuesday morning, wearing a "yellow vest, safety goggles, a respirator mask... and, if possible, a blue shirt."

About a dozen men showed up, and right about that time, so did an armored truck.

Suddenly, one of the dozen men dressed in this yellow vest, goggles, mask and blue shirt stepped out of the crowd, blasted the guard with some pepper spray, took the money bag and then did a 100 yard dash -- with at least one bystander giving chase -- to a nearby creek.

He escaped down the creek in an inner tube, and he remains at large.

Meanwhile, the job hunters never did get their $28.50-an-hour job.

Geoff Williams is a freelance journalist and the author of C.C. Pyle's Amazing Foot Race: The True Story of the 1928 Coast-to-Coast Run Across America (Rodale).