I know I'm late to the party, but I'll chime in anyway:

(1) Job interviews do very little to assess someone's qualifications for a job, but they can be reasonably effective at weeding out people who just don't fit in. It's probably better for everyone involved that things went down like they did. The kid can move on to somewhere he fits in better, or wait a few years until he's matured to the point where he can better assess and meet expectations.

(2) With respect to his justification about how dirty, worn-out shoes show how hard people work, I suspect he was just caught flat-footed when called on the state of his shoes and gave the best (though still lame) response he could.

(3) I hate interviews so much..from both sides!