Employee Is Surprised Their Nasty Ex-Boss Attends A Job Interview At Their New Company, Does Their Best To Make Them Fail It

Behind this whole newfangled instant karma craze, we forgot one great thing - revenge is a dish best served cold. After all, the world around us has become incredibly fast, and even YouTube videos longer than ten minutes sometimes seem incredibly long to us. What can we say about a year or even more of waiting for a reason to take revenge?

But these stories are good for that - when, it would seem, everyone has already forgotten about everything bad, a perfect reason for petty revenge suddenly turns up - and then the principle of well-aged karma comes into play. Everything is exactly as described in this recent story by Reddit user u/Pixie__Pink Petty Revenge.

In fact, everything in this story looks quite simple - unfortunately, this happens to many people. The Original Poster (OP) once had the misfortune to work under the supervision of a rude and unbalanced person who literally brought an entire department to tears. It got to the point, the author of the post says, that the boss would vent their anger because of some of their own failures in their personal life on employees. Not surprisingly, after some time, the OP quit and found a good job in another company.

What came to the surprise of the author was when they later accidentally found out that the same obnoxious boss turned out to apply for a position in the OP's new company! Well, it was time to act! And at the same time, it cannot be said that the author of the post was guided solely by the desire to take revenge. In the end, to prevent a toxic person from reaching the work team is the sacred duty of any employee truly loyal to the company!

So, you've probably already guessed what the original poster did. They just went to the management and told about their negative experience with this jobseeker. Apparently, the recruiters took note of the information received from the OP, because during the interview process, some questions were specifically aimed at unveiling potential red flags.

Apparently, since the former boss of the OP was never hired, these red flags were successfully raised. The author also admits that, according to their information, the applicant had previously bragged that the interview was literally in their bag, so the failure was a serious blow for them. It is a pity, of course, that they did not find out, whose fault it was that they did not manage to get the desired job. However, then the story of revenge would have turned out to be completely perfect, and absolute perfection does not exist in this world.

There is no doubt that an experienced HR specialist is able to easily identify a problematic candidate for any position on their own, even without prompting from outside. According to Rebecca Zucker, a contributor to Harvard Business Review, there are 10 red flags to watch out in a job interview, among which, in addition to the pretty "classic" constant rescheduling and disorganization or disrespecting others, one can also find a lack of clarity or consistency in answers, bait and switch, or resistance to change - even if the applicant says they want change. It's entirely possible the OP's former boss fell for one of the above.

In any case, for the company where the author of the post now works, apparently there is absolutely no need to be upset that this person did not get a position - it could definitely be a bad hire. After all, according to a CareerBulder survey conducted several years ago, two in three workers say they have accepted a job and later realized it was a bad fit, and half of these workers have quit within six months. Moreover, the average cost of one bad hire is nearly $15,000 while the average cost of losing a good hire is nearly $30,000. All in all, the author of the post probably just saved the company a hefty amount of money...

By the way, the commenters ton the post not only mainly supported the author, but also admitted that they also acted this way in similar situations - when the opportunity arose, for example, to take revenge on a former boss for an unfair dismissal. Moreover, some people in the comments do not even consider this revenge. "I don't think this was petty. I'd call it an honest reference," one of the commenters notes. And what's your opinion on this case?