My youngest is at Uni and applying for internships for his placement year. He has been lucky enough to get to interview stage in most of the places he has applied to but, until recently, hasn't had any offers. He is obliged by the Uni to take the first offer he gets.
The job he really wanted is with the Civil Service so after several tests and an interview, he was absolutely thrilled when he got offered a placement subject to references and would be notified of the specifics shortly. How we celebrated!
A couple of weeks later, he got an email to say would he consider placements in Wales, despite having applied for London. There was no mention of any consequences of turning this down so he wrote to say he would prefer a place in London. He got another email acknowledging that and told he would hear of his placement shortly . A week later he got another email saying that all the places were gone in his chosen place, he would be on a waiting list and those on it would be chosen if a place came up in order of merit but no mention of how far up the list that would place him. Once again there was mention of placements in Wales.
Now, obviously he immediately wrote and said he would take a guaranteed place in Wales but would still like to be considered for a place in London if one came up. He is still waiting over a week later to see if he is going to get a place.
AIBU to think that if you write to tell someone they are going to get a placement, you should be able to provide that placement even if it isn't in the place they want? He could have turned down other jobs had he been offered them on the basis that he had the job he wanted. Surely they could count the number of vacancies and send out the right number of job offers. They could write to the others and say they were on a reserve list. The disappointment has come when he was in the middle of his exams which was disheartening and he had stopped applying to other placements because he thought he had it in the bag. I know this may not be as terrible as many of the things that are going in the world and he will get over it but others may have really floundered at this treatment.
