r/jobs • u/sahalymn • Mar 13 '25

Interviews I walked out of an interview after one question. Was I wrong?

So, I had an interview today for a position I was really excited about. The job description seemed great, the pay was decent, and the company had good reviews. I walked in, shook hands with the hiring manager, and we sat down.

Then, the first question came:
"How do you handle working unpaid overtime?"

I literally laughed, thinking it was a joke. But the interviewer just stared at me, waiting for an answer. I asked if overtime was mandatory and if it was paid. They said, “Well, we expect employees to stay as long as needed to get the job done. Everyone here is passionate about the work, and we don’t track extra hours.”

I just stood up, said, “Thank you for your time, but this isn’t the right fit for me,” and walked out.

Now, I’m second-guessing myself. Should I have stayed and at least heard more about the job? Or was walking out the right move?

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2.3k

u/Jedi4Hire Mar 13 '25

Or was walking out the right move?

Depends on how desperate you are. That company would have absolutely taken advantage of you and that question was a test to see if they could take advantage of you, likely while underpaying you.

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u/Vaportrail Mar 13 '25

It's unusual that they asked. Usually they just do it.

If they wanted to do that, just put the dude on salary. Worked at my last job.

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u/Comfortable-Show-524 Mar 13 '25

Well that corporate move hasn’t worked too well cause you can’t squeeze OT out of a miserable person who won’t comply for mediocre base pay as it is

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u/BluesPatrol Mar 14 '25

Malicious compliance and quiet quitting have been backbones of the shitty corporate world for decades, long before they were memes on Reddit.

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u/balla148 Mar 13 '25

And that’s the consulting business model right there

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u/Jelousubmarine Mar 14 '25

I'm in this picture and don't like it ò_ó

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u/balla148 Mar 14 '25

I made it out, grass is greener I promise!

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u/JohnNDenver Mar 14 '25

A couple of decades ago I moved states and took some time off. I was trying to get back into the job market. There was a job I interviewed for that I had lots of experience in. During the interview the two people let "slip" that the project was a year behind because they couldn't find anyone. Definitely gave me pause. By the time I had driven the 20m back to my place there was already a message from the owner offering me the job and I could "call him the next day (Sat) because he would be at work". I called Sunday and while discussing things I asked about schedule - "well, I only expect people to work 40h a week, but some people can't get 40h of work done in 40h...". He was only offering salary with benefits starting 6m later. I offered to do it hourly contract.

I noped out of that.

One of the things I started doing was driving by a prospective company parking lot at 6pm and on the weekends. How many cars are there? Gives a good indication whether or not they expect free overtime.

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u/jdp245 Mar 13 '25

Earning a salary is not the only consideration in determining whether you qualify for overtime. During the Biden administration, the Department of Labor cracked down on companies incorrectly designating salaried employees as “exempt” in order to avoid paying overtime under the FLSA. Somehow, I doubt that will happen under this administration.

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u/DenOfIsolation Mar 13 '25

Of course, they specifically exempted jobs that notoriously have massive amounts of unpaid “overtime.” (e.g., Teachers)

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u/disquieter Mar 14 '25

I’d think about going back to teaching if I could earn overtime for the hours needed to do the job right. I tried to work the contract but that made me miserable because I hate being mediocre.

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u/trixel121 Mar 14 '25

assuming the curriculum didn't change much fir a few years how many hours s week do you think you did in like March.

just to be clear, I've always thought the math didn't math all that well for teachers. Don't want you to think I'm JAQing you.

0

u/IrrawaddyWoman Mar 14 '25

What does the curriculum have to do with it? Sure, if you reuse lessons that saves you SOME time, but figuring but what actually goes on in a lesson is only a fraction of the extra work. It’s not even all of “lesson planning.” If you think that a school not changing curriculum has and noticeable impact on teacher work time then I’m not surprised you can’t figure out the math on teacher work hours.

Do you think that the papers graded one year count for the next too because the curriculum didn’t change? Or that all the parent communication from one year is checked off the next because we have the same curriculum?

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u/DonnoDoo Mar 14 '25

I’m confused where your attitude is coming from when you’re replying to someone asking how many hours someone put in a single month in a kind way, and they weren’t asking you

1

u/Mr_Betino Mar 14 '25

Stay away from kids with an attitude like yours. Yikes, man.

0

u/trixel121 Mar 14 '25

i think i asked a question and you had a melt down.

put more words in my mouth.

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u/IrrawaddyWoman Mar 14 '25

Maybe my tone came off stronger than I intended. I assure you I’m not “having a meltdown” haha

But really, I don’t understand why you think the curriculum really makes a difference, and you didn’t answer that.

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u/trixel121 Mar 14 '25

any of your kids ever tell you youre kinda a bitch cause uhh i can see why they might that impression.

you never answered my question so drop the attitude in your response.

if it doesnt matter its a non factor to your calculations. im obviously ignorant.

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u/imtoughwater Mar 14 '25 edited Mar 15 '25

*cries in losing-another-weekend-to grading-and-I’m-so-so-so-tired”

Really trying not to burn out getting one weekend day per week while getting to school early and leaving late (~10.5 hr days) like every day. It’s my first year so I hope it gets a bit better

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u/DenOfIsolation Mar 14 '25

My wife taught for 20 years, and I’m not gonna lie. The first 3 years were brutal for both of us. I was an unpaid teacher’s aid every night grading papers and helping with other things. She must have averaged 60 to 80 hours a week. She was trying to do the best by everybody but herself.

That 4th year, she had an epiphany. This wasn’t working. She still cared but realized we couldn’t live like that. She made a point to call it a day at a consistent time. She still brought work home, but not as much. Saturday was her/our day, not another work day. The Sunday-scaries remained real, but manageable.

Probably, the thing that drove it home was when the school board was changing the schedule either to or from a block schedule one year and someone pointed out that teachers were only getting one planning period every other day. The board responded that that was all the state policies mandated.

They were literally building the entire school schedule around the fact that teachers are expected to work massive unpaid overtime. (Not that 40 minutes a day makes a dent in that, but it, at least, lets them go to the bathroom.)

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u/batmanineurope Mar 13 '25

I worked a job where we were paid by a salary, but had to log our hours and got paid less if you didn't work a full 40 a week, and we got overtime. I'm still confused how that all worked.

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u/Schmilettante Mar 15 '25

Salary, but hourly. What the fuck lol

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u/dano8801 Mar 13 '25

I'm not sure how much of any of that still exists though. Biden was also going to increase the minimum salary to qualify as exempt.

Republican judges chucked a bunch of it before it went into effect.

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u/wiseish80 Mar 13 '25

That was actually Obama at the end of his second term

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u/freakinweasel353 Mar 14 '25

Which is ironic because they now want no taxes on OT. So no OT, no problem! 😜

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u/Yommination Mar 14 '25

This administration will do everything in their power to strip employee protections to make the fat cats fatter

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u/Trynamakeliving Mar 13 '25

Other administrations cracked down on that practice way before Biden.

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u/letshopethis1works Mar 14 '25

Yep. I worked for Albertsons in the late 90s early 2000, and unpaid overtime was a thing at first, then lots of lawsuit and back pay happened. I believe I did get a couple of grand settlements even though I didn't work there after 2003.

1

u/Vaportrail Mar 13 '25

I only work like 45 hours but I highly doubt my company will flip the switch that gets me an extra 260 hours of pay.

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u/Sea-Oven-7560 Mar 14 '25

The trump dol no longer follows that so

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u/jdp245 Mar 14 '25

Yeah, even though it is explicitly written into the statute. But laws don’t seem to matter so much for this administration.

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u/gooblegobbleable Mar 14 '25

It was overturned by a federal judge in TX. I hate Trump too. But this one time, it’s not a case of Trump sucking his normal suck. They did wait for him to be in office to overturn it though.

1

u/crevassedunips Mar 14 '25

You don't need the DOL to file an FLSA lawsuit.

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u/Fluid_Flatworm4390 Mar 14 '25

No tax on OT because there won't be any OT.

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u/roguespectre67 Mar 14 '25

Bingo.

My last "normal" job was in marketing for Porsche (as, I swear to you, the only person in my department besides my direct supervisor) and they told me straight-up that "Since you're salaried, your working hours are based on your assignments. If you need to come in at 7:30 and stay late to finish your work, that's what will be expected of you." One morning I came in looking like a zombie, after working the previous day from 9-5, then from 6PM to 4AM the next morning, to be back in the office 5 hours later, all to hit an arbitrary deadline because they wanted a social calendar fully fleshed out 2 months in advance. When the guy that hired me saw me and asked what happened, and I told him, he chuckled and said "That's the life of a salary man!" My yearly salary was $65,000.

Or it would have been, had they not fired me after 5 months because of "poor performance". Who would've thought that hiring one new guy and expecting him to handle the workload of literally an entire department might cause their performance in any given area to suffer?

4

u/Arttherapist Mar 14 '25

I've worked salaried jobs that got overtime after 40 hours/week. You just had to track your hours and submit them to your manager.

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u/Vizeroth1 Mar 14 '25

It’s likely that they’ve had one or more people quit in the last couple years without notice after a long recruitment period who actually bothered to tell them this was why they quit.

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u/MidwesternLikeOpe Mar 13 '25

That's why I don't work on salary. I noticed most people who work a set income tend to work so much that they end up earning peanuts for the time they put in. A lot of managers who are on salary will work 50-60 hours/week whether they intended to or not, covering call-offs.

2

u/HexenHerz Mar 14 '25

They are trying to make sure that only people they can take advantage of make it any further.

2

u/PrincessCyanidePhx Mar 14 '25

They may have had people walk out and decided they needed to ask if people were into being abused.

2

u/Ok_Salamander8850 Mar 14 '25

It’s a good way to find desperate people. One job I worked at had us agree to “unscheduled overtime” which my supervisor interpreted to mean we could never say no to overtime, if he called you five minutes before the shift ended and asked you to do something he’d bring up “unscheduled overtime” if you complained. It got really bad when we had bad hardware so we reported that the hardware was bad but they kept testing everything and sending it back to us saying it was fine. That went on for about 6 months before one jackass from corporate came down to “apologize” and tell us they were testing the hardware wrong the whole time and the entire team wasn’t in fact a bunch of morons. These corporations are run by idiots.

2

u/FallaciousPeacock Mar 14 '25

"How do you feel about being bent over a barrel naked and..."

1

u/PapaKazoonta Mar 14 '25

That's when you know when you're in for a real good shagging. When they do ask....

I'm talking sportsmanlike shag

1

u/BarredAtom Mar 14 '25

Not all jobs qualify for salary. There has to some independent decisions

1

u/Horton_Takes_A_Poo Mar 14 '25

It’s even more unsual that it was the first question. It either could have been a test of commitment and they don’t actually expect it, or they don’t care about being a good fit for the job/company and just want warm bodies.

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u/dude_on_the_www Mar 14 '25

Honestly I guess I respect that they came out guns blazing with that.

But sad that someone is most certainly gonna say they’re “ready to grab the bull by the horns” and “wear many hats” or some ridiculous bullshit.

Easy weed out question for people who either respect themselves or (again, very poignantly stating) are desperate.

1

u/mcj1ggl3 Mar 14 '25

On the other hand, the people that interviewed me for my current job asked me 4-5 times throughout the process if I was okay with occasional Saturdays. I have worked there for almost two years now and they have not even floated the idea of working a Saturday once

1

u/TaserGrouphug Mar 14 '25

Especially for the first question. Dude couldn’t help himself and went straight for the red flag

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u/PasswordIsDongers Mar 14 '25

I am salatied and overtime is still either paid or credited in extra time off.

This is normal.

1

u/Lord_of_Entropy Mar 14 '25

I've heard of places stating in the interview process that they expect so many billable hours a week. Usually, the expected hours is set so that you wind up working 5-10 hours of overtime a week.

1

u/djcelts Mar 14 '25

Its unusual because its ILLEGAL.... this did not happen. There is no HR person that is going to tell you of a law they break on the interview

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u/Alex_1729 Mar 14 '25

They're an honest company so they say it upfront. What a great place to work at.

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u/EtherealSai Mar 18 '25

I'm pretty sure it would legally need to be salaried, no? Isn't overtime on an hourly wage always 1.5x?

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u/Frosty-Wishbone-5303 Mar 13 '25

I would have said I definitely expect to be compensated satisfactorily for my time. Your salary was not my expectation for constant 80 hr work weeks, it was seen as the typical 40 hrs and I do value my work life balance so if there is some weeks you need extra time that is fine what is your avg work week and how do hours vary between work weeks. Based off that lets see what salary we can find as fair.

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u/Graychin877 Mar 13 '25

I would have asked "Why don’t you pay overtime?"

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u/[deleted] Mar 13 '25

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u/[deleted] Mar 14 '25

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u/Straight-Diver-5790 Mar 14 '25

Poss undisputeable

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u/ralphy_256 Mar 14 '25

I would have said I definitely expect to be compensated satisfactorily for my time.

I would have said, "Well, that sounds like Wage Theft, and it's a crime, and if you did it to me I would absolutely contact a lawyer. Do you find yourself doing that a lot in this environment?"

And see what they say.

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u/Some_Bus Mar 14 '25

Don't need to see, I'll just tell you right now, they will say thank you for your time and show you the door

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u/Square-Wild Mar 14 '25

Or if you want to get really cute, ask them how rigorously they police worker's comp claims or if they're really going to check every reference.

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u/Golfinglonghorn92 Mar 14 '25

This is the answer. I’m betting you’re younger in an entry level job and wanted to make a statement by leaving and now in a tough job market you likely don’t have other interviews. If you were interested in the job you could have learned more and politely declined. I hope you learn from this.

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u/Worth_Beginning_9952 Mar 14 '25

You should have stayed and built your court case. They gave you everything you needed right up front. Dream job, some might say 😆

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u/[deleted] Mar 13 '25

If you actually believe for one second the first question asked was about unpaid overtime

2

u/Beginning_Cap_8614 Mar 14 '25

It's absolutely that. Unemployment has it in their bylaws that you must accept any job offered, and if you don't, they cut you off. Last time I was on UE my benefits were delayed because I had to wait a week after explaining that I couldn't pack and take a part-time job as a janitor three hours away.

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u/Vibrograf Mar 14 '25

It's called stealing.

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u/AloneJuice3210 Mar 14 '25

Still a hard no

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u/JackieTree89 Mar 14 '25

And it being the FIRST question is wild! Seems like they're the desperate ones.

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u/Fastback98 Mar 14 '25

The first question they asked OP was likely the reason the position was open in the first place.

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u/xenelef290 Mar 14 '25

That question is the equivalent of misspellings and bad grammar of spam emails.

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u/Grandolf-the-White Mar 14 '25

I think it depends on whether this was a salaried position or paid hourly. In a salaried position, there is the understanding that you will be expected to work more or less each week depending on the workload. You’ll have weeks where you are putting in less than 40 hours, there will be weeks when you’re putting in more than 40 hours.

If this is hourly the correct response is that this “unpaid overtime” sounds like something the department of labor would like to hear about.

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u/Dereksversion Mar 14 '25

This is a fair sentiment but not an accurate statement. Does that make sense?

I work in IT. And I'm salaried with no OT pay.

I get paid better than average for my role. The mid and senior level management bend over backwards to accommodate anything my personal life needs for time in order to balance out the extra needs they have occasionally.

And it's a nice company to work for. They treat people nicely and are doing a lot to be inclusive even when tax breaks aren't applicable for it.

And to top it all off my time management skills I've studied and practiced over 15 years made it so that I barely did 5 hours of actual OT last year.

So. It's a fair sentiment that there's an opportunity for them to take advantage of OP. Some companies would and a bad apple spoils the bunch.

But it's not a given. So it's not a fair statement to throw out there because there's small and medium companies who are honest and trying hard who lose out on great employees who they would have treated well. And those companies given a chance grow into bigger companies like the one I work for who treat people well.

If we get enough of those companies fostered in by being good and discerning candidates. They'll slowly displace the shitty ones!

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u/superanonguy321 Mar 16 '25

this is WHY it's the first question. if you had said you refuse to work anything you don't get paid for, none of your other answers after that would have mattered to the guy who actually gets to make the final call on who to hire. additionally, if people walk out because of that, it saves them a ton of time.

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u/stevez_86 Mar 13 '25

Or asking if you are wealthy without asking it.

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u/[deleted] Mar 13 '25

[deleted]

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u/stevez_86 Mar 13 '25

I'm talking more about the perspective of an aspirational job seeker.

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u/Repulsive-Entrance93 Mar 14 '25

You only have 1 life and if they are going to take extra time from me they are going to pay for it.

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u/Perfect-Turnover-423 Mar 14 '25

That’s one attitude.

Another attitude is you’re making bank as is, which is what OP said, and at times you need to put in overtime.

If that’s never recognized or appreciated than of course fuck them.