Internet Backs Redditor After Tense Job Interview

While Reddit’s r/antiwork subreddit is chock full of threads detailing bad job interviews, one particularly tense exchange between a potential employee and an interviewer caught the attention of thousands of users on Wednesday.

In a viral thread boasting over 32,500 votes and 800 comments, u/p-heiress said they were accused of being late to a job interview, despite their claims they were actually five minutes early.

Beginning their post with the acknowledgement that “this has been one of the worst experiences” they have had during their recent job search, u/p-heiress explained that when they arrived at 9:55 a.m. for a 10 a.m. interview, they found the employer’s building locked. Eventually, an employee let the original poster in and assured that the interviewer would be there in just five minutes.

The Redditor said that when the first met the manager who would be interviewing them, the interviewer immediately questioned their dedication to their potential employer.

“She starts by saying ‘I don’t know if I want to interview someone who’s late,'” u/p-heiress wrote. “I tell her I got there 5 minutes early… then reminded her that she was 10 minutes late, and asked what does that say about her?”

Over the past year, statistics show that in the United States, more and more employees have asked themselves what certain actions say about their employers. In a mass-quitting phenomenon dubbed the “Great Resignation,” Americans have quit their jobs at an incredible high rate throughout 2021.

As employers across the country lament over the current “labor shortage” in the country, employees have seemingly taken their destinies into their own hands. According to Business Insider, 4,157,000 Americans separated with their employers in October. That is more than 200,000 fewer Americans than those who quit in September, 4,362,000.

Compared to October 2020, which saw 3,352,000 employees quit their jobs in the United States, and the 3,414,000 Americans who quit in October 2019—five months prior to the beginning of the ongoing global pandemic—this year’s mass exodus is much larger and has been a subject of conversation for nearly all of 2021.

And like a handful of recent stories including a job interviewer requesting a doctor’s note from an applicant before they were hired, and another interviewer berating an applicant for requesting a “livable wage,” u/p-heiress’s thread is an example of the clear and heightened tensions between employers and employees in the United States. Explaining that they “called corporate the second [they] left” to report the interviewer for their comments, u/p-heiress said that they did end up having a short interview, but commenters on the thread encouraged them to seek employment elsewhere.

“Yeah, you don’t want to work there,” u/Efficient_Mastodons wrote in a comment that received 2.2K votes. “Every time she does something out of line she’ll blame it on the employees.”

“Are these bosses even trying anymore? You’d think they don’t actually want to hire someone with behavior like this,” u/Rmf16 added.

Redditor u/strawberrywine21 commended the original poster for calling ‘corporate’ following the interview.

“Calling corporate was a good call,” they wrote. “It might not change anything, but it might. Especially if this is the 5th or 6th time they’ve gotten the same complaint.”

The thread’s original poster, u/p-heiress offered a couple of responses to supportive commenters, telling one user that the obstacles they’ve faced throughout their recent jobs search “makes me sick,” and explaining to another why they stood their ground when the interviewer challenged their punctuality.

“Honestly I just hope she realizes she can’t try to bully someone when she doesn’t know the whole store,” u/p-heiress wrote. “She tried to embarrass me, and I wasn’t having it.”