Internet Fully Backs Redditor Who Called Out Companies That False Advertise Pay Rates

The job market is a tough sell these days. One Redditor is calling attention to the false advertisement of pay rates they experienced during the hiring process.

According to a post on Reddit's "Antiwork" forum via LavaCakez918, some businesses stated their pay to be a lot higher than what they actually offered.

"FOUR JOB INTERVIEWS IN A ROW have been like this. This one in particular, for a management position, was especially heinous," they wrote. "Is this sh*t illegal? If not, it should be. All my interviews are, at this point, me trying to suss out if they lied on the listing (they all do)."

They continued: "I'm about ready to take one of these sh*tty jobs, tell them I have open availability, and then not show up on Saturdays when scheduled. 'Oh, you didn't think I ACTUALLY had open availability, did you? Now you're just being greedy.'"

The user also added the company names which included, "Food Lion, Applebee's, Petland, and GameStop."

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), "the median wage for workers in the United States in the fourth quarter of 2020 was $984 per week or $51,168 per year (assuming 52 weeks of work per year)." Some states, such as Massachusetts, offer the highest average salary in the U.S. at $74,189, via Zip Recruiter. Still, many of the jobs available are in the $11-18 range.

Likewise, Zip Recruiter also stated salaries for employers like Applebees can be "as high as $64,393 and as low as $21,137, the majority of salaries within the Applebee jobs category currently range between $37,357 (25th percentile) to $53,579 (75th percentile) with top earners (90th percentile) making $59,969 annually in California."

Commenters rushed in to offer support. Many said the act of false advertising should be illegal.

"If it's illegal: it's not being enforced. I would chip in eagerly to crowdsource some lawyers to start going after false job postings aggressively. I want lawyers building entire careers on nothing but these cases until employers are terrified of lying. If it's not: it's a slam dunk policy and we should turn up pressure on legislators to pass it," the top commenter Wrecksomething wrote.

They continued: "This is bullsh*t on any terms, even their money-first economic terms. You're sapping productivity out of the economy by wasting everyone's time with fake job listings. A LOT of time. And it's inhumane, so. Please give me a blueprint with the flammable bits marked so we can burn this to the ground."

Lord_Ho-Ryu added, "Most people would pass on a job listing a range like that because we all know that what you'll get is the low end; the high end is there to try and sucker us into taking the job with the delusion we'll get $18/hr."

Another suggested an uprising to stop the act from happening.

"There are places, even in the US, where job postings have to include salary ranges. So in this example, they might have had to list it as 11 to 18 an hour and then been held for that range. If people knew it paid as little as 11, they might not apply to it in the first place. Not many places have this kind of required disclosure. I think Colorado might be one of them?" admiralteal wrote.

They continued: "Frankly, a Federal law requiring salary disclosure on job postings would cover this and would make a huge difference. edit: Done, wrote my state legislators asking for wage transparency. You all should be doing the same."