If you ever played sports as a kid, you were probably taught the mantra, “If you’re early, you’re on time, and if you’re on time, you’re late.”
But can you imagine showing up for a job interview at a police department right as the building opened and still getting turned away for being “late?”
That’s what recently happened to this man, who had a scheduled interview for a desk position at his local police department, and he was shocked.
According to him, he actually arrived right on time for his appointment. In fact, he walked in just as the receptionist was removing the “Sorry, we’re closed” sign from the window.
Then, he checked in with that same receptionist, who walked to the back of the office to get someone else afterward.
“I hadn’t even had a chance to sit down when a different woman approaches the window and tells me, ‘You’re late, so we’re unable to proceed with the interview.’ She said that I was two minutes late,” he revealed.
He was totally caught off guard because, again, he was exactly on time. And those two minutes that passed by? That was just the time it took for him to speak with the receptionist.
So, he tried to stand his ground and argue that he wasn’t late. Regardless, the woman wouldn’t budge, and he was unable to discuss the issue with anyone else. That’s why, in the end, he simply walked out of the police department and went home.
Later, he did get in contact with the department employee who initially scheduled his interview, and they spoke over the phone. That employee had supposedly heard about his tardiness, and when he asked whether he was still in the running for the desk position, he didn’t get a straight answer.
Sign up for Chip Chick’s newsletter and get stories like this delivered to your inbox.
Instead, the employee claimed they weren’t in charge of hiring and offered to transfer him to the department’s lieutenant. He agreed to that, too, but the line just kept ringing, and the lieutenant, who was away from their desk, never answered the phone.
“I sent an email to the lieutenant to let them know that I was on time, for the record. I don’t know if anything will come of it. I just wanted to speak my piece,” he explained.
And now, in the wake of his lost interview, he feels like his time was totally wasted. He has no idea why the department even went through the trouble of scheduling his interview, just to reject him at the door on the day of.
In the back of his mind, he suspects that maybe his interview was cancelled due to some other reason.
“I think the woman made up that time rule. I don’t even know who she was. She wasn’t in a police uniform,” he noted.
Otherwise, it’s possible that his police department truly is extremely strict about punctuality, and he should’ve arrived earlier.
“But that still doesn’t make any sense because, as I said, they would have been closed right as I was coming in. I came in at the scheduled time, no more, no less,” he vented.
Do you agree there might’ve been some other factor at play, or should he have been waiting outside the police department even earlier? Did he make a bad first impression, or was the process too strict?
You can read the original post below.
By Katharina Buczek
Katharina Buczek graduated from Stony Brook University with a degree in Journalism and a minor in Digital Arts. Specializing in... More about Katharina Buczek
