Candidate Fails To Confirm Job Offer As Term Specified In The Letter Apparently Included Holidays

From childhood, we are taught not to put all our eggs in one basket, and this, you see, is damn right and fair. There should always be a Plan B, even if you are one hundred percent sure of your Plan A. However, sometimes this principle fails us - especially if we are faced with obvious injustice.

If you want one more clear example, here is this story from the user u/jonhssquarespaceplus, who, while looking for a job, moved in the direction of several employers at once and, quite likely, was left with nothing due to an unfortunate mistake on the company’s side. However, let's read about everything in order.

More info: Reddit

So, the Original Poster (OP), as follows from their comments to the post, was looking for work, and took part in several interviews at once. And so, unlike this case, where the applicant received offers from all the employers at once, at first they received only one offer. The letter arrived on February 16 - this is important for our plot.

An automated letter from the employer who invited the author to join the team stated that the deadline for a response was February 23 - that is, 5 business days (obviously, taking into account all weekends and holidays). But the original poster was in no hurry to agree - apparently, this employer was only a backup option in their plan, since the other options were higher paying.

However, on February 21, all plans collapsed, because the OP received a message from the HR that the offer had been rescinded, since they didn’t accept it in the allotted time frame specified in the offer letter. In correspondence with a company employee, the applicant found out that “the offer letter itself does state February 20th,” and that the employee “can’t control the system-generated email.”

Apparently, some of the other, higher-priority options also failed, so the author desperately tried to eliminate the consequences of this technical error. The OP went in person to talk after emailing the supervisor, but then the HR came out and doubled down, and the supervisor found nothing better than to agree with the HR...

Well, now the original poster is waiting for replies from other employers, and let's hope that they will still receive the desired offer. Be that as it may, such a collision with a “soulless corporate machine” should be a useful lesson for any job applicant, because when making our plans, it is worth taking into account the likelihood of such an outcome as well.

“It looks like a double mistake on the part of both HR and the applicant, who were inattentive to the offer letter and didn't clarify the difference between 5 regular and 5 working days,” says Alexei Shkurat, the founder and CEO of Peach art studio from Ukraine, whom Bored Panda asked for a comment here. “However, further, in my opinion, no one stopped the employer’s representatives from understanding the situation, and their refusal also looks ugly.”

“In the end, if the candidate performed well during the interview (and, apparently, this was the case - after all, they received the offer), then losing a potentially good employee without the opportunity to 'give a second chance' is definitely a waste. Moreover, the HR admitted that there was a technical error in the automatically generated letter. I hope this person will have better luck in the future," Alexei ponders.

Most commenters also sided with the original poster, arguing that the both the HR and the supervisor seem unreasonable here, and that the poster may have been lucky to avoid working on a toxic team. "Why would they not just admit to the mistake and ask if you want the job?" someone in the comments is sincerely perplexed. "I think you dodged a bullet," another commenter is pretty sure.

On the other hand, people in the comments draw the OP’s attention to the fact that they themselves were inattentive to the first offer they received, and that they should have studied everything in detail - even if they were expecting responses from other employers. "You're desperate for a job but you ignore their email/didn't even open and look at the offer for 5 days?" one person wrote. "Clearly this wasn't that important to you."

Commenters also shared with the original poster an almost fail-safe method on how to avoid such a situation. "Always accept the first offer and get started. Then if a better offer comes through, just quit the job you started," one of the folks in the comments suggested. And what do you, our dear readers, think about this? Please feel free to express your views in the comments below.