Woman Who Was a School Bully Applies for a Job and Encounters the Girl She Harassed

When a woman applied for a job after finishing two internships, she received a call from an acquaintance who worked in the same company. A few days later, the company refused to hire her based on something that happened years back.

The woman had been applying for jobs for quite a while now, and this job interview seemed like her big break. She was excited when she received an invitation for an interview with the company.

However, things took a different turn when an acquaintance from the same company invited her for coffee. She thought the girl would give her some tips for the interview, but she told her something she wasn't expecting to hear.

The woman was in her late twenties when she decided to apply for a full-time job that she had been preparing for. After graduating, she worked as an intern twice then started working part-time in the same niche industry she wanted to work in full-time. She explained:

"I’m willing to move for the right job, but I’d rather stay close to home — so I was stoked last summer when I got an interview for one of the very few entry-level jobs available in my city!"

Excited, the young girl prepared herself for the interview. She rehearsed answering the expected questions in front of the mirror and a dozen times in her head.

However, fate had other things planned for her. She didn't go past this stage of the hiring process, but the interviewer told her to look out for job postings that matched her skills.

When OP heard the girl's name, she instantly figured out why she was against her hiring.

A few days later, the woman received a call from an acquaintance who worked at the same company, asking if she would like to have coffee with her. She thought the meeting would be about tips on performing better next time, but the other lady told her something unexpected.

When OP (Original Poster) met her for coffee, the girl told her that someone at her workplace didn't want OP to work there. She advised her to give up her application because her chances of getting hired were close to zero. OP explained why:

"A girl I had gone to high school with is a real rock star at this company, and she threatened to resign when it looked like I was about to be offered a job."

When OP heard the girl's name, she instantly figured out why she was against her hiring. Back when OP was in high school, she used to bully other students, and the girl was one of them.

After the meeting, OP went home and searched her classmate on LinkedIn and came across her "incredible" resume. She confessed her classmate was the kind of employee "a manager wants to keep around."

A few days later, she received an email regarding another position she had applied for in the same company. It turned out that her acquaintance's prediction came true. The company didn't hire OP even though her profile matched.

When she asked the company why they didn't hire her, they told her that an employee had raised a concern so they couldn't proceed with her application.

OP was heartbroken, frustrated that she was being punished for something she did years back. She wondered if she should apologize to her classmate in hopes of getting hired in the same company. However, after some retrospection and receiving other people's opinions, she decided not to apologize.

Instead, she applied for another job opening in the same company. And when she didn't get a positive response, she took it as a sign and decided to move on. She recalled:

"I found a shop in a town seven hours away that was desperate to hire someone for a paid 9-month fellowship."

When the shop agreed to hire her, she immediately packed her bags and drove to an unknown town with her cats, leaving her boyfriend behind.

She confessed she loved her new job but hated the town. On the one hand, she missed her boyfriend and her family. On the other, she had a hard time making new friends.

She recalled calling her boyfriend crying every night. One day, he promised that he would visit her on Labor Day. However, he backed out at the last moment, saying he was busy with work.

OP's coworkers saw how stressed out she was, so one of them decided to swap shifts with her, allowing her to drive back to her town to meet her boyfriend. She drove all evening and reached her boyfriend's place at 1 a.m. but was met with something unexpected.

Tears trickled down her cheeks after seeing her boyfriend sharing his bed with another woman. She left his place and knocked on her sister's door in the middle of the night.

She told her sister what happened and spent the rest of the night sobbing on the couch. The next morning, she drove herself back to the town she worked, but things just got even worse.

"I couldn’t make myself get out of bed on Tuesday. Or Wednesday. Or Thursday. I was fired after my third no-call no-show," she explained.

After realizing what she had done to herself, she applied for the part-time position she had before the fellowship, but her ex-employer told her they had found someone who worked better than her.

Out of sheer desperation, OP again applied for a position at the company where her classmate worked. She also had to move back to her parents' house because she couldn't afford to pay rent.

On her birthday, OP's friends and sister decided to take her out for dinner to cheer her up. After dinner, she excused herself to go to the washroom and bumped into that one classmate who barred her from being hired. She was with her husband celebrating their anniversary. She explained what happened next:

"I ended up yelling/crying at her that she’d ruined my life."

A day later, OP received an email from her classmate's manager, informing her that they had removed her from the pool of candidates. The manager also said they wouldn't consider her for future job openings.

Later that afternoon, OP's classmate wrote a detailed tweet about being bullied in high school without mentioning OP's name. OP recalled:

"She also tweeted out links to local mental health resources and the National Suicide hotline that were liked/retweeted many, many times."

In response to OP's post, daisy-twig shared that she also worked in a small industry and was aware that everyone knew everything about people working in their industry. She advised OP to move far away because the chances of getting a job in the same industry locally were thin. Meanwhile, bigwigmike replied:

"I would love to know the full extent of how much she bullied this girl in highschool."

xJownage felt that OP must have done something vicious to the girl because it still haunted her to the extent that she was ready to leave her job. The Redditor believed OP wasn't right in blaming her classmate for what was happening in her life.

Most Redditors believed whatever was happening in OP's life was because of her own decisions and she had no right to blame her classmate.

Questions to Ponder:

Do you think OP should blame her classmate for what was happening in her life?

OP blamed her classmate for everything bad that had happened to her. She felt she didn't get her dream job because of her classmate. However, most Redditors believed everything that happened to her was a result of her choices in the past, chalking it to Karma. What do you think?

What do you suggest OP do moving forward? Do you think she should apologize to her classmate?

When OP didn't get the job for the first time, she wanted to apologize to her classmate for bullying her in high school. However, she decided not to do that. Do you think she should have apologized then? Do you think she should consider apologizing now after everything that transpired?

If you enjoyed reading this story, you might like this one about a man who learned he was a millionaire years after his sister kicked him out.

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