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You’re all familiar with the very shady concept of ghosting in relationship.
It’s a cowardly way of bowing out of the game when you’re no longer interested in someone and don’t want to tell them upfront.
You don’t call. You don’t message and you unfollow all social media platforms of the person you’re involved with.
This kind of behaviour is far more hurtful than it's trangressors realise because it implies that you don’t respect the person enough to do the decent thing and confront the issue face to face.
READ MORE: Should the people who have the power to fire you, follow you on social media?
Isami McCowan from Bustle.com reports that ghosting in the workplace has become a way for employees (prospective or otherwise) to engage in the following behaviours: not showing up for scheduled interviews (this one specifically related to potential candidates), not showing up for work or quitting without any notification.
I feel like this has been around much longer than we’ve assumed, but it’s only getting a label now. In fact, a few years ago, I actually remember an intern who, after a week of working, simply upped and left – with no formal notification.
She was unhappy but didn’t feel like she could talk to anyone about it, so decided that walking away would be better than trying to find a middle ground.
WATCH: If people were honest at the office
Apparently the reason so many folk are simply opting to walk away from jobs at any given time is that the job market is far more open, i.e. there are more jobs open than there are unemployed workers. This is obvioulsy not the case in South Africa, where youth unemployment is at an all time high.
READ MORE: My unpaid internship was the biggest waste of my time
Turns out though that ghosting goes both ways – and that potential candidates never hear from prospective employers again.
I mean, how many times have you applied for a job only to never receive notification that a) your application has been received and b) whether or not it’s been successful.
Of course job ad terms and conditions usually come with the caveat that if you haven’t heard back from the company within a certain period of time, you should consider yourself unsuccessful.
So it seems that the ghosting in the workplace has been going on for longer than what people want to blame millennials for (yet again), and we doubt that it will change any time soon.
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