Four rounds, and it took until the fourth to find out what the job actually was. The first three were with upper management, who stayed vague about the day-to-day. The fourth was with a peer — and in it she quickly understood: high stress, no structure, a great deal of manual work. Not, as she put it, worth a $55,000 salary, and not what the posting had described.
She says she should have pulled out the moment they used the phrase “we’re like a family here,” but she did not want to seem picky.
So she withdrew. Then one of the vice-presidents emailed to say he had heard she had withdrawn and wanted to talk — not to discuss it by email, but to get on a video call. That confirmed that she had made the right call: usually, she wrote, a company simply says it understands and both sides part ways. This felt, to her, a little invasive. But no job, she concluded, was worth her mental health.