This occurred a couple years ago but I still question myself regularly about if I did the right thing. This is a bit long-winded but I want to get all the details down.
Basically, I was working a job where I wasn’t making enough and needed full-time hours. I didn’t mind the working environment but it was obvious I wasn’t in the immediate running for a full-time position. Fast-forward a bit and I find a full-time position at another store and they say they’re willing to interview me and get me onboard in the next couple of weeks because they “urgently need someone”. I put my application in and go through the interview process, including a drug test, for the new position.
That’s when I stop getting updates from the new store because they were reviewing my application. This went on for at least two weeks. My current job was still trying to find a position for me but the manager at the time was also under review so it was complicating things.
I had sort of given up on the new position after some more time passed since no one was communicating with me. Until I randomly get a frustrated call from the new store’s manager saying they needed me 40 hours a week so I needed to start the next workday and how he “didn’t know where I was”. I felt strongly about giving a two weeks notice to my current employer so I asked about it and the new manager got annoyed and acted like I should have given it already so I could start working for him despite me never hearing from him post-interview.
Then my current employer called me, I kid you not, while I was wrapping up the call with this new manager. My current employer offered me a pay raise and full-time hours and said they would have it for me in writing the next time I came in but they needed to know before the manager left for the day so he could process it. Since the new manager had left a sour taste in my mouth I called him back and told him I was no longer interested because my current employer matched their pay and hours and continued working for the company I was already with. (He was pissed and I realize he may have thought he was used to receive a promotion while in a time crunch.)
Turns out the guy at the new store I was supposed to start working for knew of my parents since they were repeat customers and felt it appropriate to tell them I had been blacklisted from applying for any more positions with his employer because he told his district manager how I acted.
It seems pretty straightforward when I type it out, but it still makes me think, AITA for dropping out so late in the hiring process to stay with my current employer? Being blacklisted so early in my young working life from a large chain seems like a big deal, but I don’t know.