Disappearing and Unprofessionalism

I am curious. How many of you have been ghosted by someone?  I am sure that everyone knows what I am talking about but just in case, ghosting is when you leave a message for someone via some form of communication, and they don’t respond.

It used to be little things like not responding to voicemails, texts, or emails, but now it is growing well beyond that. In fact, twice in the last month, we hired someone to start a job, they accepted the offer, we booked a flight in one case and confirmed that they were good to go, and then they no showed. What is even worse is that they totally ghosted us, not letting us know what was going on, that they were going a different direction and furthermore, they would not respond to a text or phone call. This has happened to us at least three times this year and I don’t know how to take it. I want to share names, but that would not do any good and would break many employment laws.

The immediate gut reaction in these situations is to get angry, but that only hurts us and in my opinion, these people are not worth our mental equity. The better reaction is to permanently distance yourself from these people and find a way not to repeat the mistake. Easier said than done, but I think that there is a way to identify character in people by asking really tough “what would you do” type of questions and then shut up, watch and listen.

People have enough adversity finding good jobs and it is sad that employers must be on high alert, maybe more than ever, because of the behaviors of a few. This only hurts the good, the reliable, and the respectable people who will show up to work and give 100% every day.

Do your part to set an expectation and be the example. This is a disturbing trend that we cannot allow and if we all do our part, maybe we can bring a stop to it.