“I Don’t Even Know If I Can Afford To Live”: Woman’s Horrific Job Interview Goes Viral

The hassle and stress of finding a new job can often be overwhelming enough to keep us in a workplace we deeply dislike. Endless interview cycles, salary offers that appear to be stuck in 2006, and HR concocting the most outrageous lies. So some brave souls go through the effort of documenting their experiences for the rest of us.

Tiktoker Alyssa Cardib shared an example of just how messed up the job market was after an interview story from hell. Bored Panda has reached out to Alyssa Cardib by email and we will update the article when she gets back to us.
More info: TikTok

The job market has gotten pretty bad, with a long list of demands and a very short list of benefits

Image credits: Karolina Grabowska

One woman shared her experience with an absolutely dishonest and terrible series of interviews

Image credits: @alyssacardib

Alyssa applied to roughly 300 jobs and finally got one reply, that ended up being a disappointment

Earlier this year I’m looking for a job. I applied to over 300 jobs, didn’t hear back from anyone, like anything and everything I was applying to because I’m desperate, right? Finally, I heard back from one job and it’s perfect. It’s a social media position for a baseball organization. And I love baseball, and I do social media. So I’m like – this is perfect.

So I go to an interview, rock it. I’m like, ‘This job is mine’. He says, ‘I want to do a second interview.’ So I go to my second interview. At this point, I asked about the salary because he said it’s a full-time job with a salary. And he’s like, ‘Yes, I want to do one more interview with you. I’ll get you the numbers at that interview.’ So I said okay.

So I go to the third interview, and he says, ‘It’s between you and one other candidate, but I’m gonna go through with both of you. After that, I’ll call you and let you know if the job is yours.’ So I said okay. I get a call from him saying, ‘The job is yours if you want it.’ And I said, ‘I still need to know the numbers. I don’t even know if I can afford to live.’

Image credits: @alyssacardib

After 3 interviews, she was waiting for an offer

Image credits: @alyssacardib

He says, ‘The schedule is super flexible, so if you need to work another job, we can work around that.’ I said, ‘That’s not what full-time means. And frankly, you just wasted so much of my time that obviously, I have to decline this offer.’

Image credits: @alyssacardib

The story only goes downhill from here

So I move on. The next weekend, I post on my TikTok story that I’m not doing anything that night, I don’t have plans. And he texts me at 11 pm saying ‘Hey.’ And I wait till the morning to respond. I’m like, ‘Did you mean to text me this?’ And he says, ‘Yeah, I saw you weren’t doing anything. So I thought I’d ask if you wanted to grab a drink.’ So I said, ‘That’s weird. You just screwed me over so bad.’

So I posted about it on my spam account. Next thing I know, a girl messages me and she says, ‘Hey, was this guy’s name [blank]?’ And I said, ‘How the [hell] did you know that?’ She said, ‘My best friend and him were in a long-term relationship and broke up around the time that this happened to you. So what night did he send you that text?’ And I tell her and she says that night they got into a huge fight, where he was arrested on two counts of assault and battery, one of them being strangulation.

So I google his mugshot. And sure enough, there it is. He lost his current job and the organization that he was starting.

Image credits: @alyssacardib

The entire second interview was a scam

And that was just the first interview I heard back from. The second one was trying to scam me into giving him my credit so that he could open a business under my name because he defaulted on loans and didn’t have credit of his own. So yeah, the job market really is that bad.

Image credits: @alyssacardib

You can watch the full video here

@alyssacardibWatch til the end i promise its worth it♬ original sound – Lyss Lyss

One entitled commenter thought she should have been grateful for $500 so she made a reply

@alyssacardibCancel me idc♬ original sound – Lyss Lyss

HR managers know they can get away with a lot more

It can be hard to really describe the job market since it’s not exactly one big field we’re all playing on. It will differ from city to city, industry to industry, country to county. From the job takers’ perspective, there is enough fluctuation as well. Alyssa Cardib, for example, was not willing to settle for $500, which would be below minimum wage in much of the world. However, there were a handful of comments that did say they would have taken the offer, illustrating just how different people’s needs can be.

Partially, this could be the result of simply fatigue. From sending in a resume and perhaps getting an interview, now applicants might see themselves needing to “survive” multiple interviews, and take-home tasks, all of which end up eating through weeks and weeks of time. Bills and rent, however, do not wait for anyone.

Part of this is the economy in at least the United States. Tech companies have been going through round after round of layoffs, throwing literally thousands of applicants into the market. Given that mortgages, rent, and other expenses are, like death and taxes, unavoidable, people end up taking other jobs to make some income.

Image credits: Alex Green (not the actual photo)

Everyone wants a better job, dramatically increasing demand as supply stays unchanged

Suddenly more and more applicants are all vying for the same position. Companies are in a, perhaps enviable position where they can not only be picky, running candidates through multiple interviews, but also offer less. It’s even worse in countries with massive populations. The New York Times reported this year that there were roughly 1800 applicants, each, for various governmental positions.

Similarly, the BBC reported in 2018, that for 100,000 job postings in the Indian public sector, there were 23 million (you read that correctly) applicants. While the situation in the US might not be nearly as bad, just a few hundred more potential candidates in the job market is enough to give companies a little too much power.

There is a possible silver lining to this sort of situation. Instead of impersonal HR, which often might not understand the dynamics of a team or the skills needed for a role, many companies are engaging more of their staff in the hiring process. Team leads have a chance to meet candidates and get a feel for their personalities. Companies can actually test if the person has the skills they claim to have.

Image credits: Sora Shimazaki (not the actual photo)

These practices ultimately waste too much time

But this has become so normal that even a single person looking for a social media manager is going to spend hours of his and someone’s time for ultimately nothing. And applicants, like Alyssa Cardib, are forced to risk all sorts of time being wasted. Because, ultimately, the job was not full-time, nor did it pay a livable wage in large sections of the planet.

Long-term solutions remain evasive, but in the short term, sharing and documenting experiences might be the best thing folks can do. This way, candidates can actually learn what people and companies to avoid like the plague. It can also help establish a sort of baseline. After all, if you haven’t been job searching for years, you might think that seven rounds of interviews is just the new normal.

Image credits: cottonbro studio (not the actual photo)

Viewers were in agreement that finding a job is a lot harder than it should be

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