I applied online after seeing it advertised on LinkedIn, I was then invited for a phone screen with a recruiter. This part went well and he pushed me to the next interview which was a panel Teams video call with the plant manager and manufacturing manager. They asked really good questions, I talked about my experience and asked more about the role and I asked some role specific questions. They seemed to really like my experience and my answers to their questions. So a week goes by and I hear nothing. I send a polite follow up to the recruiter asking for an update. I follow up again a day later and tell him I have another potential opportunity to push him to get back to me. He sets up a time to call me later that day. He asks for my level of interest in the position still and I tell him I’m still very interested and gives me a verbal offer over the phone and they would send an offer letter on Monday. Great! I’m excited at this point! I tell my fiancé and my extended family about this new adventure and everyone is thrilled. Monday comes around and I hear nothing. I send a follow up towards the end of the day. No response. Next day comes around and I have to send an another follow up. Recruiter replies back telling me that the offer still needed to go through an approval process (why tell me it has to go through an approval process after already telling me verbally you would be sending me an offer??) whatever so I still keep my patience thinking this is going through. Later that same day he tells me i now need to go through another interview with the head of manufacturing and apologizes for the inconvenience as that part of the process was apparently out of his control as well as telling me I’m still their number 1 choice. I’m frustrated at this point, but whatever I’ll go through this next interview. I Interview next day with their ‘acting head of manufacturing’ and this guy is super rude and kept repeating things on my resume incorrectly and I had to correct him multiple times that could have been avoided if he just actually read my resume fully. Then he would nit pick certain words from my resume and ask me to explain what I meant in detail. It felt like he was purposely trying to find ways to make me fail his questions. Some questions even felt like trick questions in a way. Anyways this goes on for about an hour and I luckily held my own through all his questions as he was glad to hear what I had to say. As we are wrapping up he mentions he thinks I would be a great part for the role. After we end the phone call I’m thinking I still nailed it and it should be the greenlight from here. Two days later go by and I’m asking the recruiter for yet another update. I get one later in the afternoon with an email with nothing more saying .. unfortunately we cannot meet your salary expectations. Like what the hell? If you wanted me why would you not counter what I originally asked for in our initial screen call? So I replied to him and told him if it’s just salary, to please let me know what you can do as i'm negotiable. He then replies back with ..anything less than what you asked would be unfair to you... Dude what. What I’m thinking now is: That’s not your decision to make.. you as a company’s job is to find the right candidate and try to work with them on salary so you get the talent you want. Whether or not a certain salary is fair to someone is that someone’s call…. Not yours. I then ask him to call me to discuss and negotiate and I’m just left on read and the number he called me from before goes straight to voicemail. Never heard back… and now me, my fiancé, and my extended family is wondering what the hell happened.