The lives of every person you meet are as varied and vivid as your own.
Everyone you meet has a life that you will likely never know about. Fears and dreams and day-jobs that occupy their time just as your activities occupy your own.
Of course, that also means that the barista might be your child’s school teacher, or that the pretty girl at the end of the bar is the Hiring Manager at the firm you just applied to.
That was the issue facing Redditor and Original Poster (OP) PhysicalBuffalo5055 when she came to the “Am I the A**hole” (AITA) subReddit for judgment.
She asked:
“AITA for telling my boss not to hire a guy, because he was once rude to me at a party?”
OP began with some background.
“About half a year ago, I went to friend’s friend’s party.”
“There was a guy there ‘Kevin’, who was studying the same thing I did in university (computer science).”
“He and I started to chat and when I told him I studied the same thing he does, he told me he doesn’t believe me.”
“I must be a teacher, I look like an elementary school teacher. I was patient, because he was clearly drunk.”
“When he finally believed me, he asked me where I work and what language do we use.”
Everything was fine, until…
“He then proceeded to talk sh*t about my workplace.”
“How he could never work at a company like that and how C# is sh*t, Java is so much better, etc.”
“I went to talk to someone else at that point, but later in the evening, he came back to me even drunker, saying he still doesn’t believe that I’m a software developer, he is sure I’m a teacher.”
“Women are not good at jobs like that, their ‘strength’ is at taking care of children and teaching them. I just let him be, thinking I will never meet him again.”
Later,
“Well, fast forward to now, he applied to our company for his internship.”
“I saw my team manager and him coming out of his interview.”
“My boss told me that he was promising and might become our new intern.”
“I told my boss I was surprised considering I met the guy before and he talked sh*t about the company and said he would never work here.”
“As a direct result, my boss decided against him.”
“When I told this story to my friends, a few told me he deserved it, but a few told me I was wrong for holding a grudge against a kid based on one drunken interaction.”
“That he probably just wanted to do his uni mandated 8 weeks internship at our company and I was vindictive.”
OP was left to wonder,
“I personally don’t think I did anything wrong. AITA?”
Having explained the situation, OP turned to Reddit for judgment.
Redditors weighed in by declaring:
- NTA – Not The A**hole
- YTA – You’re The A**hole
- NAH – No A**holes Here
- ESH – Everyone Sucks Here
Redditors decided: NTA
Some felt that Kevin was a problem regardless of the situation.
“NTA.”
“Alcohol doesn’t turn you into someone who rants about how women can’t program if you’re not already someone who thinks women can’t program.” ~ mm172
“Totally agree with you. NTA”
“OP please tell your friends that it’s not about Kevin being rude.”
“Kevin is an outright misogynist that will probably cause an incident that HR will need to clean up.”
“You were saving your company from something that could have blown up on SM.” ~ MooseTek
“Yeah… they stress stuff like this a lot in my field (legal) but I think it should be talked about more in other industries too.”
“There’s no magic switch that gets flipped when you’re ‘off the clock’ that insulates you from the professional consequences of your actions in a public setting.”
“The example they like to use in training is that, for all you know, the guy in the bar that you just sh*t-talked your boss to is his nephew.”
“This guy is even worse than that.”
“He knew full well that he was bashing a company that he might end up working for someday to a current employee. No way in hell I’d ever want a guy like that associated with my firm.” ~ Vilnius_Nastavnik
Others felt that OP had protected herself by coming forward.
“His behaviour at the party showed how he truly thought.”
“It is like posting sh*t in the internet.”
“He told sh*t to someone that works there, he also behaved sh*tty to their.”
“It was just half a year ago. His view of the company didn’t change.”
“He also talked bad about this company in public.”
“He will mostly do it again. OP did him a favor. He never wanted to work in s company like this and now his wish comes true!”
“NTA It seems some friends don’t know how it works in work-life.”
“And if OP didn’t say something, he works awful and makes mistakes that costs the company lots of money….”
“And then comes out that OP knew that he didn’t want to work there and could have warned them, it could fall back negative on them.” ~ EvilFinch
“NTA, he is probably not a good coworker if he thinks that poorly of women, at some point his misogyny would have been a problem. I think you dodged a bullet with him” ~ eguz666
“Yeah, plus he wasn’t going to be a good coworker anyway because of his disdain for the primary programming language used by the company.”
“And him being a sexist a**hole would have made it so much worse.”
“OP or another employee would likely have to babysit him constantly to make sure his code was up to snuff since he likely is poor at it due to hating it, and if it was OP or another female employee, then boy howdy is that a lawsuit waiting to happen.” ~ calliatom
Commenters made particular mention of the importance of soft-skills.
“I hire people for my company, and while certain skills for X job are super important, so is workplace culture.”
“If someone on my team has experienced a potential hire and brings up concerns to me about this person, it’s an instant no.”
“Employee morale is everything, so if someone is not happy, and I can potentially squash an uncomfortable situation, I’m going to.”
“You’re NTA for bringing this up to your boss. They ultimately made the final say.” ~ andreaak88
“Forget workplace culture, if this dirtbag ever moves up to a hiring position he’ll probably exclude women just for being women because he’s a misogynistic low life.”
“Or he’ll prevent females subordinates from moving up etc. She should see where he ends up and warn them too.” ~ MissKatieMaam77
There were also personal stories.
“Nope, NTA.”
“He talked sh*t and it came back and slapped him in the face. Live and learn.”
“Side note: I used to be an admin assistant and this guy sent in his resume.”
“When I called to schedule an interview, he was allll kinds of too cool and kept asking me questions that I didn’t have the answers to (job related) and telling me he was ‘walking into a meeting and too busy to do this right now.'”
“When it finally clicked WHERE I worked, he called back, sweet as pie, blah. blah.”
“I told my boss what an a**hole he was and my boss said, ‘we’ll look elsewhere’. He kept calling back to schedule an interview and I kept ignoring the calls.”
“Moral of the story?”
“Watch your attitude and do NOT give support staff sh*t – you have to go through THEM to get to the big guns.” ~ Feisty_Brunette
Some commenters expressed hope that Kevin would learn from this.
“First off, NTA.”
“The ideal outcome of this is that somebody tells ‘Kevin’ exactly why he did not receive the internship: because he got drunk and spouted off rude and sexist things to someone.”
“He has a long life ahead of him, and if he makes a habit of telling those above him on the corporate ladder that they are wrong and that their company sucks, he is going to hit a lot of walls.” ~ bobledrew
“I’d like to believe somebody like this can change their ways, but the realistic side of me thinks otherwise.”
“Most likely, Kevin has been grass-fed into believing that women cannot be computer engineers, but teachers and judges people based on their appearance and gender.”
“This reeks of the kind of entitlement and chauvinism you get from living in an echo chamber of conservative values that haven’t changed since the 1950’s.”
“I’ll not be surprised that he is also a narcissist who lacks empathy and compassion.”
“The problem with giving him a second chance is the highly likely risk that he doesn’t learn his lesson, double downs on his flaws and once he gets enough power or status, adopts the final piece of the trifecta, machivelism.”
“Manipulating others to get his way, or in the professional world, hiring others who look and act like him into positions of power so that they can continue imposing their conservative values on others and reinforcing their self importance.”
“I rather the Kevins in the world out in the open completely unaware of themselves and powerless than have them hide behind their power and privilege.” ~ yvrangel
The lives of every person you meet are as varied and vivid as your own.
Remember that the barista is the hero of his own story and that the girl at the end of the bar has her own stressful day behind her.
Be kind whenever possible.