Has an employer ever handled your application so badly you decided not to work for them?

Not an application, but I had a first day and week from hell as the HR woman and the training woman were just so awful. I am an adult and good at what I do, the HR woman changed stuff on my work declaration i.e. no disability to a yes. I have AuDHD, it’s not a disability to me, and demanded that I sign it as she has no experience with ND people, as if that’s somehow my fault. The trainer spoke to me slowly so that I could understand and I quietly told her that when I was reading for both my degrees that the lecturers didn’t speak slowly. I stuck the role for a week and a bit and left with no job to go to. The last straw was them explaining to me that Excel was a spreadsheet system. Yes. I know that. I felt like asking if they would like me to train them on it as they couldn’t sort a pivot table between them.
The trainer woman and the team manager woman just mucked about so much in those 7 working days, that I had no confidence in them, the team or the company. It’s been a long time since I have been made to feel stupid for 7 hours a day. I wasn’t sleeping at night, I had anxiety all day and when I used my inhaler at lunchtime, in the lunch room, I was told ‘oh so there is something else wrong with you then’. I put my week’s notice in that evening and never went back.
I have now got a new job. Old job actually, after a random conversation with an old team manager and would I like to come back and be on a hybrid contract. No interview, no form filling, just start Monday and they’ll worry about forms, over coffee, then. Work bag is packed.

Yes, I went for an interview at Dyson in the 90s, I think they were based somewhere like Chippenham at the time. I arrived in plenty of time for my interview and an hour after it was supposed to have started, I was still sitting in reception.

I got up and walked out, explaining to the receptionist that I couldn't stay any longer. I just felt that they had a total disregard for my time and knew it wouldn't be a pleasant place to work.

My firm's recruitment processes are quite bad in that there are so many layers of red tape to get approval to make an offer that often by the time we make an offer to a promising candidate they've already had other interviews elsewhere and been made (or sometimes have already accepted) and competing offer. It's infuriating but I have no control over the policies though I have complained many times.

I did once go to an interview at a firm where the guy who was meant to be interviewing me had forgotten I was coming. He was openly irritated and flustered, showed me into a room and snapped "I can only give you a few minutes" and then barked some questions at me. He than left and called a colleague to take over. The colleague seemed nicer at first but then peered at my CV and said "did you realise you've made a mathematical error?" (in the percentage split of my work types). I was a bit thrown and apologised. He then got up and said HE had to get in with his work day and called a third colleague in to complete the interview. She was OK but quite honestly told me that everyone there started early (before 8am) and hardly anyone left before 6.30. (I had a child at nursery and had to do either drop off or pick up so those hours were just not possible.) Final nail in the coffin was that she told me that there were a lot of socials with "rough and ready" type clients and I would need to be prepared to accept "banter" and similar (I assume she meant groping) and be willing to "laugh it off". No thanks.

After the interview I checked the "error" in my CV and there actually wasn't one so either my interviewer made the mistake or he was testing me to see if I challenged him. Arsehole. I was not made an offer and was mightily relieved, not that I would have gone to work there anyway after that debacle. A friend later went to work there and handed in her notice after 3 months. They were a bunch of nasty bullies apparently so my experience was quite reflective of that.

I applied for a role at an organisation and got down to the final stage. The process was absolutely awful, comms terrible and took so long that I decided I didn't want to work for them. They gave it to the internal candidate in the end ans I was relieved !

I travelled a couple of hours for an interview. I was left for 2.5 hours waiting, and then they told me the person I was supposed to be meeting wasn't even in the country. They pulled someone else in to interview me, offered me the job on the spot. I wrote a letter (this was about 25 years ago) turning down the offer, i.e. so don't bother sending me any paperwork. There is just no point in considering a position if you've been treated like this.

Yes, the person who was handing out drinks at the group interviews made a racist comment. I flagged it and was told it was "just how they are, a different generation" - I left immediately. I was shocked anyone stayed tbh. Lucky escape they folded 9 months later.

Many years ago I applied for a role in a company that handled printing. Went to two interviews for this role and never heard back from them - a few months later they contacted me saying they had another role come up and again, I had two interviews with them and never heard back.

The worst bit was when I went out one night and they were all there on a work's do. The people who had interviewed me - four times. I said hello as I walked past their table and they blanked me.

About a year later I had got a new role and one of my responsibilities was to look at our print supplier. And yes, our print supplier was this rude company. I changed supplier - probably cost them a £10k contract.

Teaching interview - they’re always overly intense but on one I was asked to write, without prep, an essay on two renaissance dramas they produced copies of. I had never taught them (they’re not universally on the syllabus)
ridiculous request.

Yes just recently. Applied for a job, the company contacted me asking me my salary expectations - fine. I replied with what I was looking at, they then sent me an interview request for a completely different role (in a very specific area which I have no qualifications in!) and when I contacted them to query it, they said that my salary expectation was too high for the role I applied for and so they'd put me forward for another role that was on a higher salary?! It was literally two completely different sectors😂I realised they hadn't even bothered to look at my CV (if they had they would know that I was absolutely not appropriate for the job they were trying to get me into) and binned them off.

Bad Interviews here rather than bad application process

The one where they told me at the end they "didn't like" women with children (2010s)
The one where they told me my qualifications were shit and shouted at me and pulled apart my answers all the way through (and then wanted to progress me to the next stage?)

This is going back a few years, but not far enough for them to be forgiven - mid 1980s (Equal rights came in mid 1970s). At the interview for a professional position, the partner in the firm told me that although I was very well-qualified I could never become a partner in their firm because I was a married woman!

I turned them down there and then!

Yeah, went for an interview. Got a call later that day saying that unfortunately I wasn't successful but they would like me to come in and intervew for another role that they thought I would be very suitable for.

Had an interview then was invited back to a second interview with more senior people. Then nothing. Complete radio silence. After three weeks I cracked and called the organisation. "Oh they said, we decided not to fill that position after all."

Agree with @ThanksTav Applying for an NHS job is an exercise in extreme patience and tolerance, which to be fair you will need for the job.

I have a theory that lots of companies especially public sector run little cottage industries in recruitment meaning they think they will have a job for life. If someone is ideal then for goodness sake grab em!

I was offered a job with a salary that was significantly lower than the one they'd advertised.

I withdrew my application - I wouldn't work for a company that had so little respect for their staff.

I don't think that's particularly bad. If someone is on my shortlist I won't strike them off the list because I've second guessed that something about the job won't suit them. I'll ask if they're interested and they can say yes or no. For all they know you could have moved.

If everyone did this, the NHS would have no staff… ;-) Maybe that’s been my experience anyway.

Person who would be my boss told me to hang my coat up ‘properly’ instead of putting it on the back of my chair . It was a leather coat which didn’t have a loop and I wasn’t going to put it over a horrible hook and dent it.

Didn’t accept the job offer, bossy 👢.

Yes agree @Loopytiles it's so stupid. Nobody needs 5 bloody interviews for a job.

Have heard about some large, multinational companies with many, many rounds of interviews etc, unjustified IMO!

Yes - I was thinking of not accepting the interview anyway as was pretty sure I didn't really want the job and was trying to make sure I held out for the right fit. They had offered the interview the day before and needed to accept by 5pm that day. Got a panicky call at midday to ask if I was accepting the interview. This made me sure that I didn't want the job.

I should add that it was the job of the agency to contact me, they failed, so when they contacted me about another role in banking which was an absolute bitch of a commute to the City, I declined.

Yep, Microsoft head office at Victoria station, PA to senior staff. I made it to the last two, many many interviews. I didn't get any sort of call or email when I didn't get it. Radio silence - then hearing that the other candidate got it on the grapevine. Which was staggeringly obvious at that point. Still utterly furious to this day.

I recently applied for a graduate position at a local authority. Things didn't get off to a great start when they were 20 minutes late. I was then led into a cluttered side room to do a pre interview assessment (which was fine apart from someone rushing in 10 minutes into it to tell me they'd given me the wrong assessment!) The interview was a bizarre, quite combative experience where I was asked just one question about myself and my experience and the rest of it centered around organisational values. One of the panel also took umbridge at the fact I had a specific question for another panel member, who I'd found on LinkedIn, which was related to their experience working at the organization.
3 weeks and 2 follow ups later, I'm still yet to receive the outcome, but in the unlikely event I get an offer, I won't be accepting it!

I got offered a job from an organisation like that, accepted it and regretted it.

Hugely disorganised application process, friendly and engaging CEO but who knew nothing about the job and answered questions with a lot of waffle, not asked to provide ID or prove references (v important for this type of organisation); and one 45 minute interview with no tasks, panel, process for a finance director role.

The organisation was a nightmare to work for- everything last minute, panic stations, no processes, a CEO with no finance knowledge and really scary safeguarding practices.