Held on to this story for a few months bc I didn’t know where to share it but figured I’d post it here for someone to find.
Set up to interview with a company let’s say at 1o clock. Get there at 12:50, and walk in the door. This business has everyone in the front at this point, as I would find out later. The manager, front desk lady, all employees. They’re in the middle of speaking about something so I just stay quiet, right? It hits 1 o clock. No one has even looked at me. They’ve just kept talking. Mind you, this place is a mess, we’re talking empty Amazon boxes piled high, narrow space to walk, overflowing trash can (??) and just crap everywhere. Alarm bells are ringing.
1:05. Still no one’s talking to me or looking at my. Haven’t even gotten a “just give me a sec.” I guess they were having a sort of team meeting but it very quickly turned into a just hang out and chat, including discussing an employees very personal mental health struggles in front of me, a STRANGER. Dropping names and everything. This isn’t a big front area, I’m right there, I’m in the way bc it’s so crowded from all the junk everywhere and no one’s said ANYTHING to me. It’s getting weird.
1:10 I sit down on a chair in the reception area or whatever you would call it because I’m tired of standing. It’s now been 20 minutes since I walked through the door. No one’s even looked at me.
1:15 I decide to get on my phone and start texting people for advice bc this is only my second job interview ever. Do I walk out? Do I interrupt? What do I do? I don’t want to be on my phone because it’s rude but I just have no idea what to do.
1:20/30 (I don’t really remember) someone finally says “ok let’s do her job interview.” And takes me back to an even more crowded office. Never confirmed my identity, never even asked my name. Interviewer asked the questions and didn’t care how I answered. She was on her phone half the time as I gave my answers. I was blown away. This isn’t my dream job, just a part time job because my main focus is uni, but I was still trying to be super professional and they were not even pretending to care.
I had agreed to spend a couple hours shadowing at the company to see how thing work. The employees tell me how the person who came in before me got severely injured during their shadowing portion of the interview (to the extent that they needed stitches). At that point I was like alright nope. Told them an emergency came up and I had to leave. It felt scummy to do so, but there were so many red flags, and I didn’t feel entirely safe during the shadow part of the interview, especially after hearing about the injury.
They emailed me a couple days later to ask if I wanted the job. I politely declined. Still completely baffled by how these people run a business.