I was talking to a friend about some weird and unusual experiences I have had job hunting over the years, and I would like to share these.

The first story happened in 2019. I had ten years of administrative assistant experience by then, and I had been in my current position as an administrative assistant for two years. I had a new manager who treated everyone like crap, so I started looking for another job. 

I found an ad from a staffing agency that was hiring an administrative assistant with two years of experience. “Great!” I thought. “I have ten years total.” 

I emailed a cover letter, my résumé, and a reference letter I had received from a previous employer. I had all the skills they needed.

Two days later, the staffing agency sent me an email.

Staffing Agency: “Thank you for your interest in the administrative assistant position. We have carefully reviewed your résumé and, unfortunately, we will not be able to offer you any positions with our staffing company. The reason is that you do not have any work experience. Once you have obtained work experience, please feel free to reapply.”

I was shocked by that response. I went back and checked the email that I had originally sent to make sure that my résumé and the other attachments were included. And yes, they were. I don’t believe they “carefully reviewed” my résumé. I mean, how could they have missed ten years of work experience and the reference letter?

I was tempted to send an email back and ask them this very question, but I decided just to look somewhere else.

My second story happened in 2009. I was at the local grocery store and they had a “Now Hiring” sign for an office assistant position, so I went ahead and applied for the job. I spoke to the store manager, and he was very impressed by my experience and skills, and he said he wanted to hire me. I thought this was great. This grocery store was only about five minutes from my house, and it sure would beat the hour-long commute to work every morning.

The store manager said that he couldn’t hire me until his district manager interviewed me first, so he set up an interview with the district manager.

It was a forty-five-minute drive to meet with the district manager. My interview was at eight o’clock, so I got up at 5:30 and took my time putting my makeup on, fixing my hair, and making sure my clothes were pressed. I wanted to make a good impression, so I went the extra mile to do so.

I arrived at the district manager’s office at 7:55 that morning. I went inside, spoke to the receptionist, and let her know why I was there. I was very friendly and polite.

Then, at 8:00, the district manager came out. He took me back to his office without so much as a hello.

District Manager: “Have a seat. Oh, [Store Manager] speaks very highly of you.”

I smiled at him. The district manager sat down and said he wanted to look over my résumé. He spent about three seconds on it, and then he abruptly stood up and started walking toward the door.

District Manager: “Okay, that’s it. Thank you for coming in.”

He did not give me any chance to ask any questions, and he did not ask me any questions. He also did not offer to shake my hand, and he never smiled at me.

When I got my phone out in my car, I saw that the time was 8:03 am. 

I went into that store a few days later, and the store manager came up to me and asked me what happened. I told him of the interaction with the district manager.

Store Manager: *Confused* “Well, [District Manager] did say not to hire you, but when I asked him for a reason, he said he didn’t have one.”

I shopped in that store still for a couple more months, and that same “Now Hiring” sign for an office assistant was up for the next two months.

I am still puzzled about what happened with that one.

Neither of these stories happened to me; they happened to two friends, who told me about them afterward. They involve a large company that conducted itself as if it were the CIA. Its founder also acted this way. Why, nobody knows. After many years, it was bought by a megacompany and no longer exists.

Incident #1:

[Friend #1] applied for a job with [Company] and was offered a position, so he called the recruiter.

Friend #1: “Thank you for the offer. Which office has hired me?”

Recruiter: “We will tell you that after you accept the position.”

Friend #1: “No, I need to know which city the job is in before I decide to accept.”

Recruiter: “No, we will assign you the city after you accept the job.”

Friend #1: “Sorry, it doesn’t work that way. Thanks, anyway.”

Incident #2:

[Friend #2] was offered a job as a technical writer with [Company] and she accepted. She flew to the location that was performing training for new hires, and she showed up for her first day.

Company Employee: “Okay, go to room five for new computer programmers.”

Friend #2: “No, I’m a technical writer.”

Company Employee: “No, you will be a computer programmer.”

Friend #2: “I have no background as a programmer. I’m a writer.”

Company Employee: “You are now a programmer. Room five.”

Friend #2: “Then I quit.”

Company Employee: “Okay. But you will reimburse us for the plane fare and the hotel.”

[Friend #2] grudgingly did so.

Back in 2013, I was laid off from the job that I had held for eight years. I did collect unemployment, but it was about to run out, and I had been actively seeking a job ever since I got laid off with no luck.

One day, I saw an ad for an office assistant at a local staffing agency. The ad said that it paid $12 an hour. I sent my résumé in, the lady at the staffing agency called me back, and I went in and interviewed. She told me the job would pay $12 an hour and that I had all the experience they were looking for. She also gave me a sheet of paper that had all the job duties on it — about half a page long — and told me she would contact me by the end of the week if she was going to hire me. And she did contact me.

Manager: “Can you start on Monday?”

Me: “Yes, I can do that.”

Manager: “Good. We’ll do the new-hire paperwork on Monday, then.”

I was really excited and feeling good about this job, but when I went in on Monday to do the new hire paperwork, [Manager] dropped two unexpected surprises on me.

The first surprise was that she had decided to change the job duties. The list was now a page and a half long. The second surprise was that she’d decided she was not going to pay me $12 an hour after all; instead, she was going to pay me $9 an hour.

I was really taken aback by this. I had worked in the same industry and made more than nine dollars an hour. [Manager] did say that after ninety days, she would give me a raise. I reluctantly agreed to this because I needed a job very badly.

After I started working there, [Manager] decided to add more duties. She would have me take out all the trash, dust sweep vacuum, clean the restrooms, and buy office supplies out of my own money. And that was with her promise to pay me back. I bought the office supplies one time: about $10 or $15 worth. She never paid me back, even though she promised for weeks that she would.

One day, [Manager] said that we had a potential new client and she was having lunch with him. She came back and said she was going to go ahead and get up some résumés for this new client and go over them, and then we would bring the selected ones in to interview. She decided to do this after hours. I was there for over three hours for interviews.

The next day, she decided on the right candidate to hire. She also had him come in after hours, and I was there for at least two more hours. She got the new hire to complete all his paperwork and the drug screen. She told the gentleman to report to that job site the next day at 7:00 am.

The next day, the new hire called us.

New Hire: “The supervisor wasn’t there when I got to [Job Site], so they decided to go ahead and start training me. But when the supervisor did come in three hours later, I was told that they don’t currently have any openings for the position I was trained for!”

The client also called us and the corporate office to complain about us sending over an employee when they hadn’t even signed a contract for our services yet. 

My idiot boss decided to tell corporate that it was my fault — that I was the one who hired him and sent him over. When corporate called me to ask me about this, I told them that it was all [Manager]’s doing.

Manager: *To me* “I’m sorry. I thought that if I blamed you for it, since you’re new, they wouldn’t be so upset.”

I was annoyed with her; she had lied.

The next crappy thing [Manager] did was not pay me for any of the overtime that I worked. When I questioned her about it, she said she had forgotten and that she would put it on my next check.

It was not on my next check, so I asked her about it again, as well as the money I had spent on the office supplies. Again, she claimed she’d forgotten and she would definitely add it to the next check.

Once again, I did not get any of that overtime or payment for the office supplies on the next check as [Manager] had promised. But she had a surprise for me.

Manager: “I’m going out of town next week, so I need you to be on call. You’ll be required to answer the phone at any time, day or not. But I’m not paying you for it.”

I was livid at this point and ready to quit. However, something else happened, and it made my decision to quit easier.

That same day, [Manager] came running out of the bathroom.

Manager: “I need your help!”

I got up to see what had happened, and she pointed into the bathroom.

Manager: “I overflowed the toilet!”

Me: “Did you plunge it?”

Manager: “I did, but it made everything worse! You’re going to have to try to unclog the toilet. Oh, and I need you to clean up the mess.”

Me: “You mean the human waste all over the floor? Do we have any gloves or safety equipment or anything?”

Manager: “Nope. You’ll be fine.”

At that point, I’d had enough. She expected me to work overtime and not get paid for it, buy office supplies without being reimbursed, take the blame for her mistakes, and be on call and not get paid for it, and now she thought that I was going to clean up her bathroom mess with my bare hands.

Me: “I quit. You can clean up your own messes. And you can figure out what you’re going to do next week while you’re supposed to be out of town.”

I did report [Manager] and the company to the labor board about the missing wages, but I never heard back. 

About a week later, I saw that same ad in the newspaper for the same role, and it was still saying it paid $12 an hour. And now, it said it preferred someone with a bachelor’s degree. 

About six months later, I drove by the company and saw that it had closed permanently.

When I first went job searching, I knew very little about what to look for in an offer. My mother offered little help during the process of applying — our vastly different tastes in jobs led to both of us thinking her input wouldn’t be useful — but when I did score an interview, she gave me several points of all-purpose advice.

Among them, she asked me what the offered salary was, which led me to realize that they hadn’t actually included that in the ad. When I mentioned this, my mother advised me to broach the subject at the interview.

Despite my inexperience, red flags went off when I did attempt to bring up salary and the interviewer kept “setting it aside” to talk more about the job itself. When it seemed like the interview was wrapping up, I asked about the salary again, and the interviewer seemed to be annoyed.

Interviewer: “You need to stop bringing that up. This whole time it’s been ‘salary’ this, ‘salary’ that. Why do you care so much about what you get paid?”

Me: *Dumbfounded* “…Because that’s what a job is. I do work for you; you pay me money. That’s the entire point of getting a job. If you’re not going to pay me a good salary, why would I work for you?”

Interviewer: “Look, we’re running late. I have another interview coming up. We’ll call you.”

Me: *To myself as I leave* “I’m not going to answer.”

Once I got back home and shared the experience, my mother agreed that any workplace that refused to give me an answer as to what my salary would be was not a place I should be working. When I went back to browsing job offers, she was a little more willing to offer input for the search.

I never heard back from that first place.

As a woman working in men-dominated industries, I’m well aware that sexism is still alive. Many interviewers have said to my face that they refuse to hire women. I should start bringing a tape recorder, but I feel sneaky doing so. I always look for an “EOE” in the job ad — equal opportunity employer — before applying so I don’t waste my time. This particular ad has an EOE note, and it’s a job that I have experience in, so I apply.

My first name is feminine; for example, Charlotte.

A few days after applying, I get an email.

Email: “Dear Charles: we are pleased with your experience and want to invite you to interview with us!”

Deleted. Next!