Trying to help someone without their knowledge can sometimes backfire pretty badly.

So, what would you do if a neighbor confided in you that he was trying to hire an employee, and was having a hard time finding someone locally, so he was planning to apply and hire someone from his home country? Would you stay out of it? Or would you try to help him hire someone locally by sharing the job posting on social media?

In the following story, one man does this very thing and really upsets his neighbor in the process. Here’s what happened.

AITA for sharing my neighbour’s job posting for a worker?

So my neighbour is part of a family of four who moved here a few years ago. We’re on friendly terms and talk fairly often.

A while back, he mentioned that his family has been struggling to find a domestic home support worker and that it’s been hard to get any “good” responses through the official government Job Bank.

He also told me he was in the middle of applying for permission to hire a foreign worker through one of those federal programmes where you have to show you couldn’t find anyone locally first.

Then, the applications started coming in.

He said he was hoping to bring someone over from his home country because it would be easier for his family in terms of language and familiarity.

When I saw his job posting on the government Job Bank, I figured I’d help by sharing it on my Facebook and a couple of local community groups. In my mind, more visibility = better chance of finding someone. If he found someone local, great. If not, at least it would show he genuinely tried.

After I shared it, he started getting way more applications. He complained to me that a lot of them were “bogus,” that people were just applying for the sake of applying, and that now he had to spend a ton of time sorting through them. I didn’t look at any of the applications myself. This is just what he told me.

The government denied his application.

Fast forward to now, and his application to hire a foreign worker was denied. The reason given was that he received domestic applications and therefore didn’t meet the requirement of proving he couldn’t fill the role locally.

He says that before I shared the posting, hardly anyone applied, and now the extra attention made it look like there was local interest in the job, even if he personally felt none of the applicants were suitable.

He’s really upset with me and says I interfered with a federal process I don’t understand, and that I basically tanked his chances of getting approval.

According to the neighbor, it’s all his fault.

He also said that I knew he was hoping to hire someone from his home country and that by boosting the posting, I undermined that.

From my perspective, I was just trying to help. The whole point of that system is to try to hire locally first, and the posting was public anyway. I didn’t think sharing a public job listing could backfire like this, or that more applications (even if he didn’t like them) could actually count against him.

Now things are awkward between us, and he’s blaming me for the delay and extra stress.

AITA?

Eek! It’s easy to see both sides of this, but it does seem he was just trying to help.

Let’s see how the readers over at Reddit feel about him sharing the post.

Now, this is an interesting point.

For this reader, he should’ve asked before sharing.

According to this comment, the guy wasn’t trying to hire locally.

This reader thinks he did the right thing.

The neighbor seems shady because if he really wanted to hire locally, he would’ve appreciated the gesture.

If you liked that post, check out this story about a guy who was forced to sleep on the couch at his wife’s family’s house, so he went to a hotel instead.