A frustrated job seeker drove to a local Home Depot to follow up on positions he had already applied for online, and left feeling misled.
He did what many career advisers still recommend. He applied through the company website, then decided to “show my face” in person. He asked to speak to a manager.
What he heard stopped him cold.
“Oh yeah, so those positions you mentioned aren’t open right now; the only position open is X position,” the manager told him.
The roles he had applied for were not actually available.
The applicant later clarified that he had not used a third-party job board.
“I used the company website to find the job listings, NOT Indeed or LinkedIn,” he wrote.
For him, that detail made it worse. Even applying directly did not protect him from what many people called “ghost jobs.”
After sharing the experience online, he summed up his frustration: “It’s all a big lie,” the job seeker wrote.
Ghost Jobs And “Evergreen” Listings
The post quickly drew hundreds of responses from people who said the same thing had happened to them.
“Ghost jobs are a real thing, and people actually underestimate how big of a problem this is,” one person wrote.
Another said some companies keep listings up as “evergreen” roles.
These are positions that stay posted year-round, especially in retail and food service, where turnover is high.
Managers collect applications so that if someone quits, they already have resumes on file.
Former retail workers confirmed the practice. “Home Depot and many other companies will keep positions like that ‘open’ year round and only fill it during Busy Season in the spring,” one ex-employee wrote.
From a company perspective, this can make operational sense. From an applicant’s perspective, it feels misleading.
The original poster compared it to false advertising.
“That’s equivalent to false advertising, which is illegal. This should also be illegal because it just wastes my time,” he wrote.
Hiring Freeze Or Branding?
Several people argued that some listings exist for optics.
“Putting out fake positions like they’re hiring makes it look like the company is still growing,” one person wrote.
Another said companies sometimes post jobs “to appear more successful to the marketplace. if company X has so many job postings, they must be doing great.”
Others pushed back, suggesting not every long-running listing is malicious. One manager said he had an entry-level engineering role posted for more than six months.
Candidates made it to final rounds and then backed out or turned out to be ineligible.
“It’s not all malicious, just the nature of things,” he wrote.
Still, the overall tone of the thread leaned heavily toward distrust.
Multiple people shared stories of seeing roles remain posted for weeks after they knew the job had already been filled.
Job Boards Under Fire
The conversation also shifted to job platforms.
One small-business owner said he paid to post on Indeed and received about 100 resumes over three months.
Half the people he contacted claimed they “didn’t submit an application” or had found a job years earlier.
“Here is my conspiracy theory, indeed, and other companies like that are keeping both sides blaming each other,” he wrote.
“Employers, nobody wants to work. Applicants, nobody is hiring. We are blaming each other while indeed is churning applications and making money.”
Another person compared Indeed to “the shitty Tinder of job finding,” arguing that the platform profits from churn.
Even so, the original poster’s situation did not involve a third-party board. The listing was on the company’s own site.
Confusion, Anger And Resignation
Not everyone agreed the situation proved widespread deception.
One person played “devil’s advocate,” suggesting the manager may have meant the positions were filled recently and not yet removed from the site.
High-volume roles can receive hundreds of applications, making it hard to respond to everyone.
Others said walking into stores can backfire. “People who show up to ask about their application never get an interview,” one retail worker wrote, explaining that stressed managers sometimes view it as an interruption.
But many readers saw the episode as confirmation of what they already suspected.
“So glad u posted this bc this needs to be talked about more !!” one person wrote.
Another urged action: “Contact your lawmakers. This fake job listing bull crap is outrageous.”
When the original poster asked who exactly to report it to, no one provided a clear path.
The emotional arc of the thread moved from surprise to anger to resignation.
Some people said they have given up on traditional job hunting altogether.
One former retail worker said he plans to join the Air Force because it feels like “a golden ticket” compared with what he called the “nonsense civilian job” market.
Whether the issue stems from evergreen listings, hiring freezes, slow internal processes or deliberate branding tactics, the end result feels the same to applicants: time spent applying for roles that may not exist.
And that is why the post resonated.
“It’s all a big lie,” the job seeker wrote.
For hundreds of others scrolling through the thread, that sentence did not sound exaggerated. It sounded familiar.