After leaving my last job because of a conflict with my manager, I’ve been looking for a new position and doing job interview after job interview. I’ve had many difficult interviews – but this last one was just ridiculous. When they found out about the difficulties I’d had in my last job, they gave me the third degree (jmd in Kreuzverhöhr nehmen) to find out all the details. Even if they offer me the job, I won’t take it – not if that is how they treat their staff.
We have the Freemasons (Freimaurer) to thank for this idiom. The Freemasons have three degrees of membership – the first is Entered Apprentice, the second Fellowcraft, and the third is master mason. To reach the third degree, a candidate must endure, among other things, an interrogation that is more physically challenging than for the first two degrees. This is how „the third degree“ came to mean „an intensive, possibly brutal, interrogation.“