Man Hires Employee But Is Baffled When Someone Else Turns Up For Work

The wife wrote: “My husband works in IT and is on the leadership team at a midsized private company. He was part of a panel that recently interviewed a number of folks for an open position on his team.

"They are entirely remote. They had a few candidates for a first and second round, and had one make it to a third final round before an offer. ‘John’ accepted the offer and started last week! 

“Except… it’s not the John my husband remembers. My husband was confused and said the following things were odd.” 

She went on to list a number of red flags, including the fact that ‘John’ had different hair and wore glasses. 

Having previously made references to being single, he also started speaking about ‘working in a garage because his three children and wife’ were home.

The woman’s husband described the new man as being ‘aloof and pretty timid’, compared to the ‘confident and articulate’ man he spoke to before. 

"John can’t answer a number of questions that they previously discussed in the interview, things pretty pivotal to the position.

"He is convinced this is not the person they hired,” she then said, explaining how she suggested there may have been a mix-up in candidates, meaning the wrong person was offered the job and accepted. 

“Since only one candidate made it to the third round, that is really unlikely,” the wife said, adding that her husband was ‘confident' that there hadn’t been a mix-up. 

In a later update, the woman said her husband’s boss wanted to know if ‘John’ was acting differently to the man they hired. 

“He responded and told her all of his suspicions with the caveat that he didn’t want to accuse him of anything but something is very off,” she continued. 

“She too thinks it’s unlikely candidates were mixed up because she has his resume and John claims all the same work history/credentials as the John they interviewed.” 

HR and an internal recruiter later confirmed the right candidate had been offered the job, but agreed ‘many things were odd’. 

They all tried to work out whether to confront ‘John’ and let him to try to explain himself or let him go, with the wife adding: “He either lied about his identity or lied about his experience since he’s unable to speak about the basics of the job now so regardless it seems like he will be gone.” 

Eventually, after a phone call with HR, ‘John’ quit and ‘hung up the calls’. 

“He has since been unreachable,” the wife explained, saying it had been an ‘incredibly bizarre situation’.