Interviewer was two hours late

Question

I feel like I did the right thing, but I'm just entering into the film industry. I really am willing to see if I could have overreacted on this in any way.

I found this post for an internship on a movie (non-union), sent a DM to the guy, told him in advance I'm only available Monday to Friday as I have to keep a job doing two 11 hours shifts on the weekends, and also I have no prior experience in film -- I made this clear in advance, so if he didn't want to proceed we wouldn't waste each other's time this way.

He said all is good, schedules an Skype appointment for 6 PM the day after.

Skip to the next day at 6 PM - no call. I wait 25 minutes, send him a message: "Hi (employer's name), did an emergency come up?". Nothing. After 45 minutes I just got up my chair kind of pissed off and started to cook as I was hungry. I can see on Messenger he's online, goes offline, and comes back in. I don't think much of it, as you never know if something happened.

Skip to 7:35 PM. I start writing him a message to be sure if it's an emergency or if he's ghosting. As I'm writing, he starts writing back, he says: "Hi (my name), So very sorry for this. We had meetings back to back and took a break and it honestly slipped out my mind."

I'm at least glad he replied and was honest, but at that point I 'honestly as well' lost any interest in working with him.

I reply: "I appreciate your honesty and I get it, but I kind of lost interest. No worries (y) shit happens."

He replies: "Have you worked on a film before? Out of curiosity.". He already knows I don't. It's the first thing that was made clear the day before, and I kind of felt like he was trying to trick me into feeling guilty -- working in the film industry isn't a valid excuse to waste someone's time in my eyes. I don't care how many doors that closes for me.

I block him.

Did I misread anything? I copy-pasted the actual conversation -- I genuinely just felt I didn't want to work with him and he wasted my time. It is not really an emergency - I just forgot about me. I understand he was really busy, but I don’t devalue giving my time like that.

Answer 1

I think you handled that rather poorly, for numerous reasons.

First and foremost, the interviewer expressed that he was sorry, and gave a pretty reasonable explanation as to why he was late. He didn't try to justify it, or use it as an opportunity to brag about how important he was, he seemed genuinely apologetic. While you are free, of course, to decide against working with someone for any reason you choose, to do so because of this seems to be pretty extreme.

Second, your response ("I appreciate your honesty and I get it but I kinda lost interest No worries (y) shit happens.") comes across as unprofessional and actually pretty obnoxious. It seems that the interviewer felt that way too, as that is why he responded angrily. While you (like I said above) are free to decided against working with someone for whatever reason, you should always conduct yourself politely and professionally, otherwise you'll leave a bad impression. The problem with leaving a bad impression is that the repercussions might follow you around. For example, it is quite possible you might apply for another position in the future (even at a different place) and the same person will screen your resume, recall this incident, and immediately decide to pass. Or perhaps, the company he works for keeps notes on applicants; if he wrote "really obnoxious" in your file, the next time you apply to that company, whomever is reviewing your application will pull up those notes, and probably decided to pass on you, too.

Finally, you seem to be really unaware of the "power differential" of your two positions. He is an established professional in that industry, while you are just getting started. He's hiring, while you're looking for a job. He's gotten many, many applicants for that position, while you're probably applying to many, many jobs without even getting a response. He will likely fill that role in a minute, while it might take weeks before you get another interview. As such, the fact that you threw away this opportunity will affect you much, much, more than it will affect him. This doesn't mean that you should beg for a job, or put up with unreasonable people, but to throw away this opportunity because he was a bit busy was probably not a great move.

Last but not the least, as @AmiralPatate duly noted, schedule slips like this are likely to be a part of the film industry in general due to its nature and your interviewer's behavior may not actually be unprofessional by the industry's standards:

It's also worth noting as an intern, you learn the job but you also learn the workplace. Probably one of the thing you'll learn is film production can get chaotic. So I would add that if meetings fell out of schedule that day, it's possible it's a recurring thing that you'll have to deal with if you want to work in that industry. That's something you should ask at the interview, if that happens often, and even how they personally deal with it.

Answer 2

Did I misread anything?

Not really. They made a mistake. They got distracted and forgot. That should not happen. But it did. They owned their mistake and apologized.

The problem is what followed. You could not accept other people making mistakes. Even though their mistake cost you next to nothing. It's not like you flew out of town and waited in a hot office for hours. You waited in your own home with things to do while waiting.

Your reaction was toxic. Working with you with such an attitude would mean that everybody will have to tip-toe around you, hiding their mistakes from you so you don't flip. This won't work. We are all human, we all make mistakes. The key to team work is accepting that and going forward constructively after mistakes are made. You did the opposite.

I guess you can apologize. Never hurts. And then look for other opportunities, hoping this person will not talk about your fallout.

Answer 3

Did I misread anything?

One thing:

He replies: ''Have you worked on a film before? Out of curiosity.'' he already knows I don't, it's the first thing that was made clear the day before, kinda felt like he was trying to trick me

People in the position to hire people forget details about the people they're wanting to hire all the time. Like, constantly. Even if those details have been "made clear" previously.

In a sense it's understandable. They're interviewing a dozen people or more for the role, and are you the one who was previously at that other place, oh, no, sorry, that was one of the other candidates wasn't it?

Expecting the interviewer to keep all the details about you fresh in their mind is unrealistic. So, you have to cut them slack for that. When they ask about something that you have already told them previously, just politely tell them it again, as if it was the first time.

Answer 4

After just a very few minutes, you should have simply asked to reschedule the interview. Perhaps another day would be less hectic.

Answer 5

Being late (but apologizing) and not having memorized all the details of your application are certainly yellow flags. Things which shouldn't happen, but things which can happen occasionally even to the best employers.

But they are not red flags (aka reasons to not work for them under any circumstances).

Consider it from the other side. Imagine you had some circumstances beyond your control causing you to be late for the interview. And imagine you made the faux-pas of asking a question which can be answered by just reading the job posting. Would you be happy if they just said "We appreciate your honesty and we get it but we kinda lost interest in you, goodbye" and then blocked you without giving you the opportunity to present yourself properly?

Answer 6

I agree with the other answers. I just want to point out one thing that was not addressed - in my opinion, your "did an emergency come up?" message was already a wrong (and somewhat passive-aggressive) step.

I think it's fine to ping a person who's late, but I would write something like "Hello, we have scheduled an interview for 3 pm, I just want to check in to make sure it's still happening, or if it might be better to reschedule".

When you ask if an emergency had come up, you implicitly suggest that only an emergency would be an acceptable reason for the person to be late, which is judgemental and not your place to decide. Also, it can be perceived as a violation of the other person's privacy. Suppose that an emergency had indeed occurred - maybe the other person is not comfortable to share this with you? Maybe it's a personal matter?

Overall I think you should be less judgemental, and not jump to conclusions when you don't have all the facts. And like others have said - no matter what the situation is - conduct yourself in a professional manner, and avoid saying things that are or can be perceived as passive aggressive.

Answer 7

An interview is just as much for an applicant to evaluate the employer as it is for the employer to evaluate the candidate.

You decided that being late for the interview and not having all your information ready was not acceptable. It's your perogative whether you reject a job based on this.

This will, naturally, limit your options especially when you have no experience in the field.

Answer 8

I agree broadly with the other answers saying your response was not the best course of action, but one point that has not been made is that a mistake like this by an interviewer could be a significant opportunity for the candidate.

For one, it's a chance for you to show how you can act professionally in the face of an annoyance, and not get deterred when things don't go your way.

It's also human nature for most reasonable people to feel a sense of obligation after inconveniencing someone. It might not be enough to actually land the job, but it seems likely that anyone reasonable enough to give a sincere apology would at least be entering the interview keen to give you a good hearing.

Answer 9

Contrary to most of the opinion expressed here, I think OP did the right thing. It is very clear that the interviewer did not have a great deal of respect for OP. If you do not have respect for someone when you first get to know the person, will you have respect for him/her in the future? I think it is not likely. Since the interviewer is potentially someone whom OP will work with for a long time (should he get accepted for the job), a very possible scenario is that OP may get a job with a boss who does not respect him, and then OP will have to tolerate this for a long time. However, all of these can be avoided by refusing to work with this interviewer, which is what OP chose and did. I think it is better for OP to look for another person, someone who respect him more, to work with.

I understand that OP is a 'small fish' whereas the interviewer is a 'big fish' with lots of connection etc. And not getting this job or interview will affect OP more then the interviewer. But I do not think that OP should be forced 'bow' to power and accept a superior who does not respect him. When we are jobless, our brains will activate the stress and fear emotions because no job = no money = cannot pay the bills. But this does not mean we should give in to our fear blindly and accept whatever that comes our way. Hence, I think OP is right in not accepting this interview opportunity.

However, I agree with most of the opinion here that OP did not handle this situation well. OP does not need to tell the interviewer that s/he lost interest in the job. This is passive aggressive behavior. If my boyfriend does this to me often, I will get upset and seriously consider breaking up with him. I want to stress this, passive aggressive behavior is very very very damaging to any type relationship. I suggest that OP cultivates a healthier and happier mindset, and keep your passive aggressiveness to yourself.

Answer 10

A couple things to note:

The fact that the interview slipped his mind because of the other meetings implies the other meetings were not interviews themselves

This implies that, while they were busy with other meetings, they may have had a large number of documents to reference for the set of meetings, and had mistakenly forgotten that your resume was also up there for review for when they prepared their interview.

Alongside that interview, they possibly had a window or tab listing the notes from the previous conversations. They would have these notes specifically so that they wouldn't have to rely on their memory immediately leading into an interview; this at least, is normal interviewer standard - for in-person interviews, this is partially why you're recommended to bring your own resume into an interview, in case they misplaced yours and wanted to take a look at it on the spot.

In the case of them misplacing the meeting here, rescheduling would be ideal not just because they lost track of meetings, but because they would be wanting to get time to review your resume before and make sure they're ready to interview you without spending lots of time trying to force their interview information into mind.

There is likely a lot more information in their notes than just the lack of prior experience in film

Your lack of experience in the film industry is one detail, but as mentioned above, they'd likely have notes on other aspects of conversations you had, or skimmed from your resume, to give them cliff notes to reference during an interview.

Those notes would include something about the latest field of education you had, or if there were any notable gaps in your resume, or a truncated lists of the skills you listed, so that they had a quick form to look at briefly for reference.

One reason they may do this is that you are unlikely to be the only candidate for a position, and there's a lot of information per candidate (All of the above information, but across a list of candidates, who they would like to avoid merging the information into one candidate space), and they may be worried they had some crossover on their information.

So when they responded to your response asking if you had been in film before, even if they had brought up their notes, they might have wanted to double check that they had the right person's information, possibly as a way to reorient themselves for a rescheduled interview as well.

Had you missed something, the best person to ask is the person you blocked.

Blocking him before he could respond with a possible rescheduling, or to give some advice about other jobs in the field, was unwise - even with that rude response initially that prompted the question, it would have been worthwhile getting feedback on that response from the interviewer themselves.

They may chosen not to give you further information, but blocking them prevented them from being able to do so.

Answer 11

How would you like to be treated if you had forgotten? Would you like him to immediately lose interest and refuse to interview you?

People forget things sometimes - it happens. Get over it.

Answer 12

If you've done meetings in general you know sometimes schedules slip, meetings slip people's minds, and so on. While this type of incident can be annoying, it isn't a world ender, but your response was way over the top.

I've been in both scenarios, where I've forgotten about a meeting when something else came up and took my attention away. As well as the person who was waiting for a meeting but the guy never showed. I usually wait 15 minutes and then email/contact them. In that contact I make aware that no hard feelings, if they can hop on now, good, if not we can always reschedule.

To me the other answers missed one important aspect. You kept asking if it was an emergency and expected an answer, as if it was a priority for him to respond... in an emergency (even just a low importance "emergency"), they have their priorities shifted away from you. You're, at that point in time given your relationship with them, very low in priority. That isn't an insult, we're all human and have limited capacity, you can't fault someone for prioritizing their tasks. I've had instances where there was an emergency (main site down, local server down, code causing a major issue), and in those cases I'll limit my priorities to only what is important for the task. If this involves ignoring people, unfortunately if their case isn't on the same level of priority, I hope they understand and all I can do is apologize later.

Thus, in your case your perception and expectations are wrong, in my opinion. It sounds like you got increasingly annoyed by no response even when you had the expectation it was an emergency, but you can't get that annoyed by a higher up prioritizing things, especially if they apologize. In this case, it wasn't an emergency, but you still overreacted. You can rightfully be annoyed, but you should keep your anger in check since the incident wasn't anything that major on his end. In the absolute worst case that you don't ever want to work with the guy, you can politely tapper off future communications.

Answer 13

From a pragmatic point of view --independent of the right and wrong of the situation --you're applying for an entry-level (unskilled, non-experienced) position in an industry that huge numbers of people dream of breaking into.

Does that justify mistreating you? Should you put up with abuses because of that? No, and no. But you should recognize that you're nobody's top priority, and that you're immediately replaceable by tons of other people who are highly motivated to take your place. In that sense, the interview is an accurate preview of what you could expect from the actual job, and your level of status there. Since the expectations on both sides were so out of line with each other, it was a benefit to both of you that you discovered that early.

To be very honest, if I was the interviewer, I might be regretful that I had wasted your time, due to my error, but I would also think to myself that I had dodged a bullet by not hiring you. That's not a reflection on you as a person, it's a result that all indications are you would have not have been a happy fit for the position they were actually offering.

Answer 14

I think you definitely overreacted.

1. You have no experience in the industry and are trying to break into it
2. Is the internship paid or not?
3. People in any industry can get busy or have meetings run long
4. He probably has other people applying for the internship, it's hard to remember the details for everyone

I think the proper way to handle it would have been to wait 15 minutes, then consider the meeting cancelled. They can't expect you to wait around on Skype all night.

wait 25 minutes, send him a message: "Hi (employer's name), did an emergency come up?". Nothing. After 45 minutes I just got up my chair kind of pissed off and started to cook as I was hungry.

You decided to wait around for 45 minutes, getting angry.

Skip to 7:35 PM. I start writing him a message to be sure if it's an emergency or if he's ghosting. As I'm writing, he starts writing back, he says: "Hi (my name), So very sorry for this. We had meetings back to back and took a break and it honestly slipped out my mind."

That seems like a sincere apology, but you've already gotten angry and have been stewing about it. You cared enough to start writing a message 95 minutes after the meeting was scheduled for.

This could have been solved by not being a doormat. After 15 minutes you should have sent a message like this, then put it out of your mind:

"Hello XXX. I assume something came up and you are unavailable. Let me know when we can reschedule our interview. Thanks, YYY."

This lets them know the meeting is now cancelled for his failure to appear, and he has the opportunity to reschedule. It's professional and lets him know your time is valuable. There was no need to get angry or stew over it, things happen.

Waiting around hoping he will suddenly get online to interview you is a recipe for failure. In this case you probably would have gotten a message after 95 minutes with the apology and either an offer to interview at the time or some times when they would be available later.

Answer 15

Nope, I think you did the right thing. The only thing I think you did wrong was your phrasing in your reply, which could have been more professional, although if this was over an IM application then I might even say that's appropriate (depending on your other messages in context).

This is not the 1980s. We have smartphones, and we have Google Calendar or Apple iCal; when you have a meeting, you can set a notification to go off to remind you. If you're in the middle of a meeting when your notification goes off, you can send a quick message (yes, even mid-meeting; if you're a recruiter and have things going on, people will be understanding) saying: "Sorry, meeting running late, will keep you posted", just to keep the applicant updated. Seriously, it's 8 words, I'm not asking for an essay.

The fact that the recruiter admitted to forgetting about the meeting means that you are simply not important enough for him to remember; if you were important enough to be remembered, then you would have been, or at least the recruiter would have set a reminder to remember you by if he thinks he might forget you. Do you really want to work for a company where they do not even think you are important enough to remember? I certainly wouldn't. Imagine something at this company actually goes wrong and you need to talk to someone about something important, and "oops, sorry I was busy and forgot about your meeting". Based on this interaction, that is the impression you should have of this company; the reason being that recruiting is a two-way street, and both parties should put their best foot forward to make a good first impression, and this (making you wait 2 hours and then admitting to forgetting about the meeting completely) is what the company thinks is a "good first impression"; imagine what a "bad impression" looks like!

As for forgetting whether or not you've worked in film before, that is the only part of his conduct that is forgivable. Recruiters work with tens, maybe even hundreds, of people at a time, and they often don't remember small details about each individual person. Asking questions that they should know the answers to but forgot happens all the time, I wouldn't read anything into that at all, except that this person is talking to more people than just you (which should be obvious anyway). I wouldn't have blocked him over that.

I think you handled this situation more or less correctly, I'd probably give you an A- or B+ for your score. While I'm not sure if you've gotten yourself blacklisted by this company due to this interaction, to be honest if it was me, I wouldn't consider that to be a loss.

CAVEAT: This is my advice for a "professional" context. My understanding is that the film industry tends to be much more hierarchical, where it is completely normal for people "at the bottom" to be treated like crap, and that's just "how it is". So it's possible my entire answer is off-base. But anyway, I think treating people this way is pretty crappy, and you're better off not dealing with such people.