[bilekas]

I have a third pov of this, I was interviewing for a large financial company in an SE role, everything went well, the team seemed really good and projects were interesting, good quality of interviews too.

It was through an employment agency and so I was negotiating via them. Recieved the offer and needed a few days just to review it and consider everything. I told the recruiter this. Then had a medical emergency which had me in hospital for 3 weeks, on the 3rd day in hospital however, I fired an email from my phone just to let the recruiter know what the situation was. Thought nothing of it.

When I got out of hospital after a serious surgery etc, was distracted in fairness. I had emails from the recruiter which bordered on threats about how I was completely unprofessional for not regularly updating him, and how the city is small and the company is big etc.

Needless to say I wasn't too bothered but it took me back a bit.

[1123581321]

Were you not able to communicate every few days of the stay? 15-20 days with no contact is a long time and you put the recruiter in an unfortunate position as they must have been advocating for you. You can’t have known in advance that they would send rude emails in response to silence.

[sofixa]

I'm sorry, but if I'm (not OP) in the hospital for something serious requiring operations and a multi-week stay, responding to emails is somewhere around last on my todo list.

[1123581321]

No need to apologize. I'm sure you understand how that necessary deprioritization might still look like ghosting or insincerity to others, especially someone who had just exerted significant effort on your behalf. If I had the ability to send one email, I'd hope to at least be able to send a second regretfully declining the offer.