Candidate Rejects Lowball Offer. Someone Calls His Boss the Next Morning.

A Washington state job seeker spent two months and four interview rounds with a mid-sized SaaS company. The offer arrived $18,000 below the salary minimum they had stated in their first conversation. They declined politely. The next morning, the candidate's manager called them in — someone had phoned the main office line requesting "employment verification" for an employee who had not applied anywhere else recently.