“Lindsey” from W– called me at the office. That’s fine. She said that she saw our posting for a junior systems administrator and she thought she had the perfect candidate.

I stopped her and told her that, unfortunately for her, we had made an offer and it had been accepted.

“Aww.”

She tried to tell me about her candidate anyway. I stopped her again.

“I did say that we had made an offer and it was accepted. Are you trying to get me to rescind the offer? What sort of horribly unethical person do you think I am?”

She asserted that wasn’t what she had in mind. Did we have any other openings? What was the size of our team? Which recruiter had shown us our successful candidate? Are we growing?

After a bunch of non-committal answers on my part, it became clear that she was prepared to dig forever.

“I have been trying to politely indicate to you that we don’t have this position open, we are happy with our choice, we don’t have any other positions at this time: but you don’t seem to have been getting that message, so I will state it outright: you should stop wasting your time with me and go on to do something more productive.”

She continued to argue with me on the basis that I had never worked with her before* and should give her a chance.

I pointed out that the purpose of a company, such as W–, is to form an overall reputation that can be extended to all the employees. This is the third or fourth unsatisfactory discussion with W– that I’ve had. She suggested that she would prefer to talk to someone who wasn’t so rude, and wished me a good day. I wished the same for her.