Whether it’s your first job or your twenty first job, there’s no question that deciding that you want to get a new job and then actually applying for it are two different things altogether. The first is a nice idea, in which you idealise a future in a new workplace or a new career, and think about how much better your life could be. Maybe you’d earn more money or have better benefits, maybe your colleagues would be nicer or you’d work closer to home.

But actually applying for a new job is a serious commitment, requiring significant time and energy. You polish up your resumé, write a covering statement, then fill in a load of boxes – probably late at night, before you have to go to your current job the next morning. It’s already taken up a lot of your time, before you even get an interview. Then, if you are invited to interview, that’s a whole other thing, in which you need to get dressed in your sharpest suit, travel to the new place, and meet a whole load of people who are doing little but assessing you the entire time. It’s stressful to say the least.

Ideally though, at the end of it, you’ll have a new job – and while it won’t make your life 100% better, hopefully it will make some positive change at least. That was what the jobseeker in this story was hoping – but his experience at interview suggested that things were actually going to be quite different.

Read on to find out why.

Is anyone else fed up with companies’ games about this whole hybrid work thing?

I just finished an interview for a job that looked perfect on paper.

Honestly, I’m a bit overqualified, but I had my whole pitch prepared about how much I love their mission (something in the education field) and that I’m willing to accept a lower salary because I believe in the work they do.

The ad said ‘hybrid, three days a week in the office’. The commute is 75 minutes, but I thought, no problem, I can handle that three times a week.

Let’s see how this actually turned out.

I waited about two weeks for this interview.

Finally, the time came, and about five minutes in, the interviewer asks me if I’d be okay working full-time from the office.

I was surprised and told her I thought the job was hybrid.

She told me, ‘Oh, it is hybrid, but the first four months need you to be in the office for training, and after that, the whole company is going back to full-time in the office anyway.’

Yikes! Read on to find out how he felt about this blatant lie.

What’s the point of these games?

Do they think that once they have you hooked, you’ll just give up on your conditions?

This is such an incredible disregard for people’s time.

This person is absolutely right – not being transparent about the working arrangements is disgraceful.

It really sucks that the interviewee didn’t have this information before their interview – they might not have interviewed if that was the case.

What a nasty trick.

If you enjoyed this story, check out this post about a mom who homeschooled during the day and worked at night, only to have her employer try to change her schedule.

Let’s see what the Reddit community made of this.

This person couldn’t understand why a company would pull a stunt like that.

However, others sadly had had similar experiences.

While this person made a point of reporting every job they saw like that.

It’s really horrendous that companies believe that tricking people into applying and then interviewing for their jobs on false pretences is okay. Literally writing that it is a remote hybrid job to gaslight people into believing that they’ll have a flexible arrangement and a reasonable work life balance if they work for the company? It’s disgusting. It’s completely disrespectful of the folk who put a lot of time, effort, and hope into the job application – not to mention the interview – only to find out that the job itself isn’t suitable for their needs.

If a company isn’t getting enough suitable applications for a position, it doesn’t mean that they should outright lie to make the job seem more attractive. That’s completely unfair to everyone involved. Instead, they should be figuring out what makes them so unattractive – is it the job itself, or the salary? Are there not enough benefits, or does the company have a poor reputation? Because, unless the job really is in the middle of nowhere, it’s unlikely that it’s just the location that is the problem. They need to take a good look at themselves.

If you enjoyed this story, check out this post about an IT department who keeps receiving tickets for a company that was previously spun off.