A woman had a strange experience when she tried to shake a job interviewer’s hand, but was told she did not have consent to do so. Now, she is trying to make sense of the bizarre experience and if, in fact, shaking hands is an act that requires consent.
Interviewing for a job is incredibly stressful. There’s a lot on the line, and you want to put your best foot forward. One woman believed she was doing just that until the interviewer let her know that her completely normal behavior was apparently unacceptable.
The woman named Lauren, known as @scratchqueenlauren on TikTok, shared her bizarre job interview experience.“I just had the craziest thing happen to me in a job interview that’s, like, ever happened to me,” she said in a video.
She described the job as a “pretty simple full-time office job.” She stated that she had already completed one interview over the phone and was asked to come into the office for a second, but things felt off from the beginning.
“It’s a lady. When I go to meet her, she’s very, like, standoffish,” she said. The two then had an awkward conversation in which the interviewer asked Lauren questions about how she handles workplace drama.
At the end of the interview, Lauren prepared to do the customary thing and shake the other woman’s hand, but it didn’t go well.“I go to, like, put my hand out to shake her hand, like, ‘Thank you for meeting me,’ and she goes, ‘Don’t touch me’ … She’s like, ‘I don’t give consent for you to touch me,’” Lauren said.
She tried to explain that she didn’t actually touch the woman and just wanted to extend a kind gesture. “‘I didn’t touch you,’” she said. “‘I’m just trying to shake your hand to thank you for meeting with me.’” The woman’s response shocked Lauren. “She was like, ‘That’s very inconsiderate of you.’”
Lauren was so upset by the interview that she decided she no longer wanted the job, although she doubted the woman would call her about it anyway.
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Lauren made a second video to update viewers and answer some questions she had received. “The position I was applying for was actually for a construction company,” she explained.
Lauren stated that many people commented on her first video and recommended that she report what happened to her to the company’s human resources department. However, that might have led to an even stickier situation.
“When I researched the company on who I needed to reach out to regarding what happened, the HR director has the same last name as the woman I interviewed with yesterday,” Lauren said.
At first, she ignored the strange coincidence and sent the email anyway. Then, she decided to do a bit of sleuthing and discovered the HR director was the daughter of the woman she had interviewed with. “My email is probably going to be laughed at and disregarded completely,” she lamented.
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Handshakes are a regular part of job interviews, even used by recruiters to gauge candidates. According to Indeed, “When you first meet a professional employer, you often greet them with a handshake … Your handshake can actually leave a significant impression on a hiring manager.”
If handshakes are such a typical part of the interviewing process, it seems exceptionally strange that this woman would not want to shake hands. And, even if she did not wish to, there was probably a kinder way she could have informed Lauren of that.
This interaction was undoubtedly a red flag, and she’s probably better off looking for a job elsewhere.
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Mary-Faith Martinez is a writer with a bachelor’s degree in English and Journalism who covers news, psychology, lifestyle, and human interest topics.
