Interview scheduling automation is supposed to save recruiters time by intelligently finding available slots that work for candidates and hiring managers. It's not supposed to schedule 27 interviews on Christmas Day starting at 9 AM and running until 7 PM.

But that's exactly what happened when a mid-sized tech company's AI scheduling tool went completely off the rails, and the screenshots are magnificent.

How It Happened

The company uses an automated interview scheduling platform that syncs with team calendars, identifies availability, and sends candidates self-scheduling links. Interview scheduling software automates the candidate interview scheduling process and provides an improved candidate experience—in theory.

In practice, someone forgot to mark December 25th as a company holiday in the system. To the AI, Christmas Day looked like a completely open day with zero conflicts across the entire interview team. Every single interviewer's calendar was wide open.

The AI scheduling logic: "This is perfect! I can finally catch up on the interview backlog. Everyone's available. Let's book everything."

Automated interview scheduling software instantly identifies available time slots for each interviewer. When every time slot appears available, the AI did exactly what it was programmed to do—schedule interviews efficiently to minimize wait times.

The first candidate to receive the invitation was confused: "Interview on Christmas Day at 9 AM? Is this a test to see if I'm desperate enough to interview on a major holiday?"

The Candidate Reactions

Twenty-seven candidates received interview invitations for December 25th, staggered throughout the day. The responses ranged from confused to annoyed to absolutely hilarious.

One candidate replied: "I appreciate the offer, but I'll be occupied with family obligations on Christmas. Also, this feels like a red flag about work-life balance."

Another: "Is this company culture? Because if so, I'm withdrawing my application now."

The best response: "I'll attend the 9 AM interview if everyone shows up in ugly Christmas sweaters and we conduct the technical assessment while opening presents. Otherwise, hard pass."

Companies use AI chatbots and automated scheduling to handle candidate questions and coordination, but when the automation breaks down, candidates notice immediately.

Someone posted screenshots on Reddit's r/recruitinghell with the caption "They want me to interview on Christmas Day. I guess they really mean it when they say 'fast-paced environment.'" It got 15,000 upvotes and hundreds of comments roasting the company.

The Internal Panic

The recruiting team discovered the problem when they started getting candidate replies on Monday morning. "Wait, why are people declining interviews for December 25th? We didn't schedule—oh no. OH NO."

They checked the scheduling system. Twenty-seven interviews. Christmas Day. 9 AM to 7 PM. Interviewers assigned: the entire engineering team, two product managers, the CTO, and somehow the head of finance who doesn't even conduct interviews.

When someone declines or cancels, automated systems should replace them with the next best choice. But when nobody can make Christmas Day work because it's, you know, Christmas, the system had no alternatives and just kept the interviews scheduled.

The recruiting team scrambled to manually cancel every interview and send apology emails. "We experienced a technical error with our scheduling system. We sincerely apologize and would like to reschedule for a time that's actually reasonable."

Half the candidates never responded. The company assumes they withdrew applications after concluding that any organization this disorganized probably isn't worth joining.

How the Interviewers Found Out

Most interviewers didn't notice the Christmas Day interviews because, obviously, they weren't checking their work calendars during the holidays. But a few people have calendar notifications enabled on their phones.

One engineering manager got a push notification at 11 PM on Christmas Eve: "Reminder: Technical interview tomorrow at 9 AM." He assumed it was a system glitch until he opened his calendar and saw six back-to-back interviews scheduled for Christmas Day.

He messaged the recruiting team: "Is this a joke? Did someone hack the scheduling system? Why do I have interviews on Christmas?"

The response: "We're aware of the issue and addressing it. Please ignore those calendar invites. And maybe disable holiday notifications on your work calendar."

Another interviewer posted in the company Slack: "Who scheduled interviews for Christmas? This is either the worst automation fail I've ever seen or we've reached new levels of workplace dysfunction."

The Vendor's Response

The scheduling software vendor issued a statement: "This incident resulted from an improperly configured holiday calendar. Our platform syncs directly with hiring managers' calendars and identifies optimal scheduling slots. When company holidays are not marked in the system, the AI treats those days as available."

Translation: it's technically user error for not configuring holidays properly, but maybe our system should have default major holidays built in so this doesn't happen.

They added a feature update: "We've implemented a warning system that flags scheduling on widely recognized holidays (Christmas, Thanksgiving, New Year's Day) and requires manual override confirmation." AI-powered scheduling should eliminate back-and-forth coordination while avoiding obvious mistakes like booking interviews on major holidays.

The Broader Problem

This isn't an isolated incident. Another company's AI scheduled interviews during a candidate's wedding. One scheduled a video interview at 3 AM because it detected an "available" time slot on a candidate's calendar that was actually them blocking sleep time.

Interview scheduling automation eliminates time-intensive phone calls and back-and-forth emails, but automation without human oversight creates spectacular failures.

The fundamental issue: AI optimizes for efficiency without understanding context. To a scheduling algorithm, December 25th is just another day. It doesn't know it's Christmas, doesn't understand cultural significance, and doesn't recognize that "available" on a calendar doesn't mean "willing to interview."

Humans would never schedule interviews on Christmas. But AI doesn't have common sense—it has optimization algorithms.

What Candidates Said Later

Most candidates who received Christmas Day interview invitations withdrew from the process. A few agreed to reschedule, though they admitted the experience made them question the company's competence.

One candidate: "If they can't configure a scheduling tool to recognize Christmas, what other basic things are they getting wrong? This doesn't inspire confidence in their technical capabilities."

Another: "I understand automation fails happen. But the fact that nobody caught this before 27 invitations went out suggests their recruiting process has serious quality control issues."

The company tried to recover by offering candidates expedited interview processes and personalized apologies from the head of recruiting. Some candidates appreciated the effort, but the damage to employer brand was already done.

The Lessons Nobody Will Learn

Every company using interview scheduling automation should configure holiday calendars properly. They should test their systems. They should have human review before mass sending interview invitations.

Will they do this? Some will. Most won't, because until automation fails spectacularly, nobody prioritizes preventing edge case disasters.

Companies will keep trusting AI to handle scheduling without adequate oversight, candidates will keep receiving absurd interview times, and recruiting teams will keep scrambling to apologize for "technical errors."

The Silver Lining

At least the company's scheduling fail was memorable. They're now known as "that company that scheduled interviews on Christmas," which is embarrassing but also unforgettable.

And somewhere, a product manager at the scheduling software vendor is updating requirements documentation: "System must include default recognition of major holidays. System must warn users before scheduling interviews on Christmas, Thanksgiving, and other widely observed holidays. System must not assume that 'available' on a calendar means 'willing to work on Christmas Day.'"

Because apparently those requirements need to be explicitly stated.

The recruiting team updated their checklist: "Before activating automated scheduling: 1) Configure company holidays, 2) Verify holiday calendar synced properly, 3) Test with dummy interviews before going live, 4) Actually check that Christmas is marked as a holiday because apparently that's not automatic."

And candidates everywhere learned a valuable lesson: if a company sends you an interview invitation for Christmas Day, it's not a test of dedication—it's a sign their automation is broken and possibly their entire recruiting function.

Merry Christmas, and please decline the 9 AM interview slot. Nobody should have to do technical assessments while opening presents.