When you apply for a job, you don’t always know what the salary would be if you were actually offered the job. Sometimes companies list the salary or the salary range on a job posting, but sometimes they do not. In some cases, potential employees are asked to state their desired salary, and if an interview goes well, salary negotiations go from there. That was the experience Reddit user Komeandgo shared in the subreddit r/antiwork.
Komeandgo shared that she “was accidentally cc’d” in an email about a job she had applied for. Before the email was sent, she had already interviewed with 3 people. She explained that during the interview “we discussed pay and I said my minimum was 60K.” She was never given a potential salary range, she was simply asked what her minimum salary was. She explained, “they never communicated pay directly to me just said ‘ok’ after I told them my minimum.”
Then Komeandgo was contacted about a second interview, but before she ever arrived for that interview, she received an email that she wasn’t meant to see. In the email, the people who interviewed her were discussing her potential salary and a potential job offer with the person who would be interviewing her at her second interview. The email stated that she was “looking for 55k-60k” which is not true. As Komeandgo stated, her minimum was 60k.
It gets worse. The email also mentioned, “I think she would accept 53k.” Um, what? She said her minimum was 60k not 53k. When she saw the email she was shocked and upset. She wrote on her Reddit post, “Company got caught lowballing me.”
There are over 3000 comments on Komeandgo’s post, so she decided to follow up with more details about how this all played out. She explained, “I went to the second interview and just told them I saw the email.” She said they were apologetic and claimed they were “embarrassed.” She continued, “I told them I feel they wouldn’t have my best interest at heart if they’re already undervaluing me and that I didn’t want to continue forward with a team that’s likely to stab me in the back.”
HR reached out to her to try to apologize and make things right, but she refused to work for that company. Instead, she “took an offer for another job that pays me more than 60K.”
Have you ever been accidentally CC’d on an email? How would you react if you found out a company was trying to lowball you?