A Temple, Texas, woman who drove to Cheddar’s on her last tank of gas to make a 3 p.m. interview says the restaurant made her wait nearly an hour, then told her in the lobby she wouldn’t be interviewed at all.
Zolina Taylor (@taylor.zolina) laid out the whole afternoon in a video addressed directly to the chain’s Temple location.
‘This happened 10 years ago’
Taylor says she saw a “now hiring” banner, hooked a U-turn into the lot, and applied and finished the assessment on the spot.
“I wanted a … job, and you guys need people, right?” she says.
She adds that an interview link never came, so she drove back twice to chase it down. She got it scheduled the first time and went back again after a text bumped her to another day at 3 p.m.
Taylor says she got there at 2:45 p.m. Per her account, a back-of-house manager pulled her aside, and then a second employee sat down beside her in the lobby, “while everybody’s [in] earshot.”
She says the manager told her the company had looked up her name and found infractions tied to a sister company. Taylor says that job was in Tennessee more than a decade ago.
“Based off of that, I don’t think we’re going to interview you,” she reports him saying. No one apologized for the wait, she says, and the news could have come by text.
What stung, she says, was the waste of gas and time: “I pulled up there on my last tank of gas,” she says.
When a manager finally appeared at around 3:35 p.m., Taylor says she tried to plead her case—that the old write-ups came out of a hostile workplace.
“You’re not even giving me the opportunity to explain what happened,” she says.
Instead, by her account, the exchange escalated: “You got loud with me, and I got louder,” before she was told to get out. Her closing shot at the location: “That’s why nobody was in that … It was 4 tables, lunchtime.”
‘Will not be spending money there’
Many commenters wanted to help Taylor, telling her about potential opportunities and offering themselves as references.
One person believed she was too good for Cheddar’s, writing, “Girllllll it’s just Cheddar’s. You seem to have your … together and are way better than a restaurant. The School districts are always hiring. You can use me as a reference.”
Another commenter also said she applied for a job at this particular Cheddar’s. “I interviewed there and got to the end of my second interview before they told me they wouldn’t hire me unless I changed my hair color to natural,” she wrote. “I understand policy but I was applying for the kitchen and they should have said something much earlier.”
Taylor replied, “Oh, so they have a pattern of wasting people’s … time?”
Job interviews are becoming a waste of time
Taylor experienced a reschedule-then-reject pattern that appears to be an increasing issue for prospective candidates, wasting time for everyone involved. It even seems that in this seller’s market, some recruiters have thrown professionalism in the trash. In one weird October 2026 case, reported by Business Today, a candidate was cut after a recruiter phoned a minute early and hung up.
Subplot reached out to Taylor via TikTok direct message and comment, and to Cheddar’s via email. We will update this story if they respond.
@taylor.zolina
