Unfortunately, Most Of Us Have To Work To Have A Life

I am the hiring manager for a large retail store. On this particular Monday, I have been reaching out to applicants about different openings and setting up phone interviews. One applicant states that she is interested in one of our openings, so I send her the link to schedule her phone interview online. These links expire twenty-four hours after being sent — which she was told about — as we typically have a lot of people scheduling interviews and it is first come, first served. When visiting the link, it gives you all available times for the next three days.

This applicant schedules her interview for the following day, Tuesday, late in the afternoon. That Tuesday morning, I get a text message from her at 9:00 am stating she is too busy for her fifteen-minute phone interview scheduled at 5:00 pm and wants to reschedule. I immediately respond.

Me: “That’s not a problem. Just click on the same link I originally sent you, and you can change your time from there.”

At 3:00 pm, I see that she still hadn’t rescheduled it, so I reach out to see if there were any problems getting it rescheduled. I ask if she needs assistance to get that processed or if she just wants to stick with the original interview time. Her interview time comes and goes with no response.

I am actually off the following day, Wednesday, but when I come into work on Thursday, I still have no response from her, so I can only assume she is no longer interested. I remove her from consideration to give other applicants the opportunity to interview for that position.

At 8:00 pm on Friday, she sends me a rude message stating that the interview link has expired. Since I am an hourly associate and I was off at 5:00 pm on Friday, I don’t see this message until I come in on Saturday at 7:00 am. I reply.

Me: “Yes, the link expired because it was only good for twenty-four hours. You haven’t responded to any of my previous messages to get a new interview scheduled.”

Her response comes within about fifteen minutes, and it blows my mind.

Applicant: “Well, excuse me for having a life. Maybe you should get one, too.”

This comes from someone who applied for one of our openings and responded enthusiastically when we reached out to her initially because she was “definitely interested” and even thanked me to the opportunity to interview. 

I have actively had to stop myself from messaging her back with the same type of attitude because, unlike her, I want to continue working and actually love my job. So, instead, I just reached out to the other stores (within the same company) in the area letting them know that that particular applicant probably wouldn’t be a good fit in a customer service role and clearly had no desire to work. I wonder if she will be able to afford this “life” she is so smug about considering our company has the highest starting pay rate in the city with the most flexible hours for scheduling around school, and she just burned three bridges.