The hiring manager was all but ready to hire this applicant, then something trivial changed everything. 

The hiring process can be extremely frustrating. You put so much into an application only for it to be promptly ignored. There are so many people looking for a job, and not enough worthwhile jobs to go around. So every listing is flooded with hundreds, if not thousands, of applications. To make your voice heard through the noise is a feat in and of itself. Once you have your foot in the door, you should relish that opportunity. You would hate for it to all go away due to something completely out of your control. Rejection always stings, but it stings even more when you’re stopped in your tracks by something that could have been avoided. When your dreams slip away on a technicality, it’s so much harder to swallow. 

But that’s what happened here, on the antiwork subreddit, where an applicant who should have been given a fair shot had their chances yanked away from them. When you start picturing yourself having a certain job, everything can come into focus. It’s a good way to manifest, and you can’t get something until you can fully see yourself doing it. When that has a way of unwinding, though, things get pretty sticky. The employee in this story learned just how arbitrary the hiring process can be, and it demoralized them quickly.