Job seeker walks out after waiting 50 minutes with no explanation — and netizens say they were right to go
A post on Reddit’s r/jobs talked about how the original poster arrived at their 11:15 a.m. interview 10 minutes early. The receptionist showed them to a room and said the interviewer would be another 10 minutes. By 11:30 a.m., nobody had appeared. By 11:45 a.m., still no one, and worse, no explanation was given to them. The original poster tried to find the receptionist, couldn’t, so they waited longer. By 12:05 p.m., a full 50 minutes past the scheduled time, they emailed the company to say they had been waiting nearly an hour with no communication, then left.
On the drive home, they received two calls. When they answered the second, they were told the interviewer was ready now, with no apology and no explanation. They were invited to come back. They declined.
“Why do employers not realise I’m interviewing them also,” the original poster wrote. “If they can’t be professional at interview stage, why would I want to work for them? All it would take was for someone to come out and inform me if there’s been a delay.”
Reddit’s verdict
The thread was firmly on the original poster’s side, and netizens also talked about how common the experience is.
“Yeah, that’s a huge red flag. You don’t want to be working for them anyways,” one commenter wrote simply.
Another shared a virtual equivalent: “I once had an interview scheduled online. I arrived into the virtual room a few minutes early, waiting for someone to let me in. Waited 10 to 15 minutes. Emailed the internal HR recruiter. They said oops, forgot to invite the actual interviewers to the meeting.”
One user described withdrawing from a process after a similar experience and being asked twice to reconsider, but still holding firm. “I have been on both sides of the table and barring an emergency, showing up on time is the bare minimum requirement for either party,” they wrote.
Another pointed to a different but related form of time-wasting: “I recently went through a multi-hour interview process with a company that absolutely knew they couldn’t afford me. What they want for the role and what they are willing to pay are also wildly misaligned. It makes me chuckle seeing the position is still being posted two months later.”
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A candidate who arrived 50 minutes late to an interview with no communication and no apology would not be considered for the role. A company that did the same thing apparently expected the candidate to drive back and proceed as if nothing had happened. The fact that it felt noteworthy enough to post about says something about how rarely that standard gets enforced from the candidate’s side.
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