“Touch Some Grass, Please”: Job Applicant Hits Back At Insulting Job Offer With Cover Letter

The job hunt is equal parts stressful, annoying, and downright insulting. Recruiters make applicants jump through fifteen hoops, only to never respond, every employer tries to lowball workers in the hope of getting someone desperate, and all the while, applicants are living off savings, mentally counting the days until it runs out.

One woman had enough when she saw jobs demanding half a decade of experience and basically offering minimum wage. Seeing that they asked for a cover letter, OP cracked her knuckles and penned a message calling out the employer's entitlement, cluelessness, and greed. We got in touch with rainingmafackas to learn more.

Bored Panda got in touch with rainingmafackas and they were kind enough to answer some questions. First, we wanted to know if their sarcastic letters ever got an actually improved offer. "I’ve never gotten a response unfortunately but I’d really love the opportunity to sit down with these hiring managers and see what research they’re doing into fair market value. I think there’s a huge gap between reality and the hiring process. Additionally, I know in this economy businesses are facing huge budget cuts. The reality is, the job market isn’t great so talented professionals are willing to take an immense pay cut just to find employment and businesses are taking advantage of that. I’m guilty myself, with 3 years of experience in my field fair market value is $50,000 however I’m so desperate to keep the lights on that I accepted an offer of $20,000. I could easily make more money at a Hobby Lobby but discrepancies in experience in a career field on a resume will cripple me even further in the future. Employers will see on your resume that you worked at a hobby lobby and essentially missed a crucial learning experience. If you leave it off your resume you still face rejection for having a gap in your resume."

We asked why they believed the hiring market was in such a bad place at the moment. "Job seekers are currently in an incredibly tight place right now and businesses are taking advantage of that by underselling them. Employers know we are desperate and will take anything we can. Additionally, not just the pay but the interview process has gotten completely out of hand. Interviews for career professionals can be 3-5 rounds, including several different competency tests, personality quizzes, filling out an MBTI, Enneagram, and even going as far as sending your zodiac chart. The interview process can take up to 2 months. I recently interviewed for a position that was 3 video calls, a presentation made, and 3 pieces of designs plus a case study all to be rejected. It’s also incredibly possible that the companies who do this take all the ideas you give them and then apply them to the business basically getting a free consultation. Questions like “What are some creative strategy ideas?” “How would you boost revenue?” “Tell me of an innovative way to do XYZ.” I’ve personally seen content I’ve created for companies later published as their own (with enough changes that it’s not copyright), but I know I inspired them to do whatever they did. The job market is vicious and you have to be just as gnarly back."

OP isn’t alone in feeling that the modern labor market has gotten out of control. Even people who get jobs often leave within their first year, as fewer and fewer workers are willing to accept bad pay, horrible managers, and terrible workplace conditions. Gone are the days of people working the same job, at the same company for decades, the average job tenure now is around two years. Despite a new generation of workers slowly becoming more aware of just how exploited they are, employers have yet to wake up to the reality that people won’t slave away for hours for pay that is below a living wage.

As OP mentioned, the common refrain from employers is that no one wants to work. Despite this idiotic claim, most jobs get an ocean of applicants, most of which will never even be told that they were rejected. It seems that hiring managers also don’t want to work these days. In the olden days, disgruntled workers would first line up a replacement before quitting, but some working conditions are so bad that a reported one-third of workers have actively considered quitting on the spot before looking for a new job. While common sense would dictate that this comes with all sorts of risks, over time, the threat of mass turnover could perhaps force employers to take a good hard look at how they treat workers.

When we say workplace conditions, it can often seem like a general description of just how a company is. But it’s important to never forget that bosses and managers have the power to change these conditions and that bad conditions are often a direct result of their choices. It’s not surprising that over half of US workers who voluntarily quit cited bad management as the primary reason. This can mean everything from bullying, mistreatment to idiotic conditions that even the average employee knows will doom a company. The bottom line is that a bad boss has a direct impact on most facets of a workplace. The insultingly low $14 an hour mentioned in OP’s post is no doubt set by this particular company's management, most likely against the best judgment of the hiring team that knows experienced, specialist workers won’t accept a high-schoolers wage.

So one bit of silver lining when it comes to these sorts of job posts is that they are clear and public red flags. A company that can’t even reward an experienced worker a living wage no doubt cuts corners elsewhere. Setting aside the fact that a company should actually reward the people doing the work, there are costs associated with not retaining good workers. The most obvious is that you lose out on experienced, knowledgeable workers. A worker with multiple years of experience will be more productive and, in turn, can pass on lessons, tips, and tricks to new hires. Not only will losing such a worker lower productivity across the board, they can be expensive to replace. Some estimates state that the replacement cost is roughly $15’000 plus a third of the worker's wage, not taking into account the fact that a specific job in the company will just remain empty. Of course, you can’t lose a worker if no one actually signs up for the job in the first place.