A Woman’s Job Interview Got Canceled Because She Asked a Simple Question

Interviews are often a case of putting your best foot forward. The company highlights how they can enrich your career as you climb the ladder to success. The applicant, on the other hand, highlights their strengths so they can be hired for the job.

For Taylor Byrnes, her phone interview with SkipTheDishes went well enough. SkipTheDishes is a food delivery service based in Winnipeg, Canada and they saw Taylor as a potential candidate for a job in menu development. And since Taylor and SkipTheDishes seem to have gotten on well enough, Taylor decided to ask them about the salary and benefits she’ll be getting if she does get hired for a job.

This polite email somehow triggered something in their HR.

The HR representative curtly replied:

Another email. Same gist, though.

Apparently, asking about compensation and benefits “at such an early stage” is reflective of how Byrnes isn’t a good fit for the job.

It kind of makes you wonder WHEN the right time would be to ask about benefits. For one, the usual reason people work is so that they can be paid for their services. And it’s only rational to want to know if the compensation offered by a company would match your expectations for how much you’ll be getting. If the applicant had gone through all the interviews and only later on learned that the compensation wasn’t right for them, wouldn’t that have been a huge waste of time?

Byrnes then decided to post the emails on social media and called for a boycott of SkipTheDishes.

Netizens online were quick to support Byrnes’ stance.

One wrote:

“I loathe that hiring processes still force us to pretend money isn’t the primary reason we want jobs.”

Meanwhile, another summed up the company’s response by paraphrasing it, saying:

“We’re really looking for more of a one-sided relationship where you care about us and we don’t care if you starve and die”.

After Byrnes’ story became viral, SkipTheDishes then decided to reach out to her:

While SkipTheDishes might not be the exploitative company the online community believes them to be, this might teach their HR department a sobering lesson on how to handle applicants from now on.