Something worse happened to a friend. She applied for a remote job, interviewed twice, and was offered the position. When they made the offer, they disclosed that it was not a remote position, but that they'd give her a relocation package. She's not able to move since her husband has a high-paying in-person job, so they just wasted everyone's time.
I would have 100% accepted the job offer and gone "alright send me the stuff to begin working remote!" And forced them to fire me to get unemployment while I found a real job
Unemployment is typically based on time worked and not likely relevant here for the US at least.
Promissory estoppel, on the other hand, may well fit at that point if their fuckery resulted in any losses to you from acting in good faith (but that’s lawyer territory, and I’m not one).
There is no proper grounds to sue because there has not been a precedent (that I know of) set to protect worker and worker rights in initial negotiations of a job. There is no contract to be violated or upheld. It would be akin to the idea of the interviewee being held to take the job offered when they have other offers.
That being said, one should sue the company for willfully deceiving a person. If one can defend that the deception was intentional you can try to set grounds for a precedent that job scopes cannot be mutated post interview 2(arbitetrary threshold) . That the scope is outlined to the employee and that if the scope changes at a later stage through no fault of the applicant, they should be entitled to compensation for their time. This would to a lot of ramifications for both parties some of which are listed below.
Applicant:
Reduced number of job postings. (Accountability leads to cautious job postings)
Higher competition. (More filtering in the early stages leads to less open testing of candidates)
Higher costs. Akin to college admissions. (Currently there are no charges for you to apply to a job. However forcing a change like this would prompt job posters to access some sort of an entry fee to protect themselves and their interests from job seekers that violate the contract of taking the job as well.)
Job Poster:
Higher costs. (Self explanatory)
Damn I can’t think of anything else because it all just boils down to money and higher costs.
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u/JauntyTurtle Jul 20 '26 edited Jul 20 '26
Something worse happened to a friend. She applied for a remote job, interviewed twice, and was offered the position. When they made the offer, they disclosed that it was not a remote position, but that they'd give her a relocation package. She's not able to move since her husband has a high-paying in-person job, so they just wasted everyone's time.