A recent graduate walked out of what felt like the best interview of her short career. It was the role she wanted, close to home, and a real pay rise on where she was. The conversation had drifted into salary bands and how soon she could start; she even offered to leave her current contract early to make the timeline work. Near the end, the interviewer asked whether she wanted a few days to think it over.
She read that as an offer. At home she emailed the company a warm acceptance, then told her family the job was hers.
The reply, a few days later, was polite and quietly devastating: they were still reviewing applications and conducting interviews. No offer had been made. She described an embarrassment strong enough to make her feel sick - 'my face is on fire,' she wrote in the post that followed.
The internet, sixteen thousand upvotes deep, mostly took her side. A recruiter of twenty years said the interviewer's mix of salary talk and start-date questions was genuinely confusing, and told her she had nothing to apologise for. Others admitted they had heard a cheerful welcome and then never heard again. The lesson she took, and the thread reinforced, was narrow and hard: an offer is not an offer until it is in writing.