was my interviewer in the wrong … or was I?

This post, was my interviewer in the wrong … or was I? , was originally published by Alison Green on Ask a Manager.

A reader writes:

I was wondering if you could help enlighten me on an extremely odd situation I had and whether I was wrong in any way.

A few months ago, I applied to an entry-level assistant/reception position for a large company. A third-party recruiter posted the listing, so he contacted me for an initial screening call and set up a phone interview with the hiring manager for the upcoming Tuesday at 11 am. The recruiter was incredibly helpful throughout and gave me the manager’s name and number so I would know who to expect.

When the time comes, I don’t immediately get a phone call but rather a voicemail from a number marked “suspected spam” marked number (meaning all calls from that number are auto-blocked/sent to voicemail). Listening to the voicemail and checking the number confirms it’s the hiring manager. I called back to explain that, for whatever reason, I didn’t get a call and only her voicemail. The manager notes how odd it was but proceeds with the interview, which went quite well.

The next day, Wednesday, I completed a personality survey needed for the second interview and the manager called that evening (5:30 pm). Again I don’t get a call, only a voicemail saying she’d like to schedule the second interview ASAP so I should call her back in the morning to schedule. The next morning, at 8:30 am on Thursday, I called her office number which went straight to voicemail and left a message stating my availability for the following week, as Thursday and Friday were too short notice (I ended up having food poisoning from dinner and was in no shape for an interview). I ended the message, asking for her to email since I was still having issues receiving her calls. At 3:30 pm, the manager left a voicemail to interview the following day Friday and as she “knows I don’t have a job right now or if I have other plans,” she insists that I confirm within the hour. I woke up from a nap at 4:45, called back, and left another message explaining I had been sick all day so Friday the next day was still too short notice but I could be available any day the following week and, again, asked to email because I didn’t want to keep missing calls/wasting each other’s time. The manager called again at 5:15 pm (still voicemail), insisting that I call back in the morning when she’d be in the office at 9 am.

I was exhausted by all the back and forth in just two days and felt incredibly disrespected as a candidate. I decided if this was how the company rushes my time and disregards my attempts at alternative communication, then it was not a good company to work for. The manager had emailed me the survey links, so I used that email and CC’d the recruiter to send my withdrawal from the whole process, along with a short explanation that her phone calls were marked “suspected spam,” I could not receive her calls and could not fix the issue from my end, so perhaps there was something she could do on their end to prevent this from happening to another candidate. I received a snarky response that she makes 100 calls a week, has never gotten a complaint before, and next time I should add expected numbers into my contacts.

I’ll admit her last point is completely valid and that’s on me. I think the spam call flag on top of everything happening in just two days made me wary of even considering doing that. But was there another point in time I was wrong? Am I justified to feel like this manager was unprofessional and I made the right choice in the end?

Well … it’s definitely true that the first time you saw her number was marked as “suspected spam” and the call didn’t ring through as a result, you should have whitelisted the number so it didn’t keep happening. This was someone you expected to have further communication with and — especially after the second time — it didn’t make sense to let that keep happening. And telling her that you couldn’t fix the issue from your end didn’t look great, since you could fix it by whitelisting the number.

So that’s your part.

But it pales in comparison to her part. Telling you that she expected you to interview the following day because she “knew you don’t have a job right now” is a ridiculous thing to say, and it reveals a lot about how she thinks and what she would be like to work for. This is someone who will demand you work unreasonable hours without notice because she “knows” you don’t have anything else going on, and who is confused about how much power her job gives her (over people who don’t even work for her — imagine what she’s like with people who do!) and is also rude.

I don’t necessarily think her continuing to call when you’d asked her to email is a huge red flag on its own. She may have figured the phone would be faster since she was trying to coordinate a meeting on short notice and you might not even see the email until past the time she hoped to meet … and it sounds like at that point she thought your only concern was that you kept missing each other, not that she realized her calls weren’t ringing through.

But that part doesn’t really matter because the “I know you don’t have anything else you could possibly be doing with your time” trumps all the rest of it anyway. That on its own is a deal-breaker because of what it says about how she operates.