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The original was posted on /r/AmItheAsshole by /u/Fine-Hotel-4950 on 2023-08-08 12:31:15.

I (27) have a friend, Natalie, who has a boyfriend, Jamie. Jamie is a complete jerk. He’s one of those people who makes bellow the belt jokes and then calls you sensitive if you don’t find it funny. In the 18 months I have known him he has called Natalie fat, “average”, boring to her face too many times to count. He has called many of our mutual friend rude and demeaning things, and has purposefully antagonised me on many occasions. We all put up with him because if we don’t we’d never see Natalie but he really is the butt of every joke, and a walking cliché.

My roommate Harry recently had a job come up in his company that Natalie asked him to interview Jamie for. Harry is part of our wider friendship group (his friend is dating one of the girls in our group), and has met Jamie but not really spent much time with him so thought he was an alright guy. I decided to keep out of it because I know Jamie has been unemployed for a while and it has really affected Natalie. However, when Harry mentioned he was going to do the interview at our apartment, he could see I was uncomfortable. I didn’t mention anywhere near the extent of Jamie’s behaviour, just said he’d made a couple of demeaning remarks to/about me and I wasn’t overly keen on being around when he was. I told Harry not to do anything about this, and that he should hire the best person for the job.

Harry went through with the interview, but he made Jamie do a lot of prep work and a presentation to other employees and then made the interview extremely long for no reason. Then at the end he said he wasn’t going to hire him. Jamie got mad at Natalie over it and she got mad at me, saying I shouldn’t have said anything about Jamie knowing how great the job would be and how hard it is to get jobs in the field. On top of that, I should have been sensitive to his unemployment and that I’m ignorant to how difficult the job market is. She’s now not speaking to me, and our friends are divided. Two think I shouldn’t have said anything, because Jamie really needs the work and ultimately it would have been helping Natalie. One friend thinks it’s fair that I expressed not wanting Jamie in my home, and that I owed it to Harry to tell him because Jamie is an HR problem waiting to happen.

On the one hand, yes, his off the clock behaviour shouldn’t cost Jamie a job, but on the other hand, why should I have to cover up for the way Jamie is? If honesty makes him looks bad then maybe that’s his problem. Then again, I guess it was some pretty petty antics that had real life consequences so maybe I shouldn’t have said anything. I’m not sure whether I should apologise.

ETA - for everyone asking how it got out that I told Harry. Jamie went home and went off on Natalie about him not getting the job, as it was basically a lock with Harry doing it as a favour to Nat. She figured the only person who would have changed Harry’s mind about doing her the favour was me, so she called and I ended up telling her the truth. She then told everyone else.

Edit 2: for everyone who missed it in the post, Harry and I are ROOMMATES so my home is his home. Harry has a home office and works out of that office most days. He conducts meetings from there all the time which is normally fine because I know all his employees really well. He did not end up having the interview with Jamie at the apartment, he had it at the registered company office.