They left a thirty-five-dollar-an-hour job for reasons they describe as office politics and personal ones, with twenty thousand dollars in savings and a reasonable belief that a similar role would take a week. The week became a month. The month became a year.
Interviews came and went. The excitement of seeing a calendar invite curdled into apathy after enough rejections. Then came one that felt different: a team that seemed engaged, a process that seemed to be moving, and a promise that a decision would arrive within two weeks. That was the middle of September. Then radio silence.
They finally called for an update. The reply was a template: a note had been sent to the hiring manager; someone would get back to them. In practice, it read as a rejection waiting for a convenient moment.
The convenient moment arrived on LinkedIn, where the first thing they saw was another candidate thanking God for the job. They closed the post with a year of savings gone, a STEM degree described as useless, and two words: I’m done.