An AI scheduling assistant that was supposed to streamline interview coordination instead created a temporal paradox by booking a candidate's final-round interview for December 2024 - approximately one year in the past. The candidate, understandably confused about how to attend an interview that technically already didn't happen, reached out to ask if they needed a time machine or if the company was just testing their problem-solving skills.

The Year That Was (Or Wasn't)

Reports indicate that the AI scheduling tool scraped available calendar slots from the hiring manager's calendar and confidently sent a meeting invite for "Tuesday, December 10, 2024 at 2:00 PM." The problem? Today is December 9, 2025. The interview is scheduled for approximately 365 days ago, which is not ideal for either party's timeline.

According to user discussions on recruiting forums, the candidate initially thought it was a typo and tried to accept the invite anyway, hoping their calendar app would auto-correct to 2025. Instead, their calendar helpfully placed the meeting in last year's schedule, right between a dentist appointment they already attended and a holiday party they already forgot about. The candidate's calendar now shows they missed an interview they were never actually invited to in the first place.

The candidate replied asking if the date was correct. The AI scheduling assistant, apparently unaware that time is linear and moves exclusively forward, cheerfully confirmed: "Yes! Your interview is scheduled for Tuesday, December 10th at 2:00 PM. Looking forward to seeing you!" No acknowledgment of the year discrepancy. No recognition that December 10, 2024 is in the past. Just confidence and enthusiasm about a meeting that cannot physically occur.

The Recruiter Discovers Time Is, In Fact, Real

The recruiter reportedly discovered the problem three days later when the candidate sent a follow-up email asking if the interview date was "perhaps meant for this decade." The recruiter checked the calendar invite, saw "December 10, 2024," and allegedly muttered something unprintable before frantically rescheduling.

Sources familiar with the incident suggest the AI tool's date logic defaulted to the current month and day but pulled the year from some outdated training data or cached calendar information. The result: a perfectly formatted calendar invite for a date that exists only in historical records and Google Calendar archives.

The recruiter sent an apologetic email explaining that "our scheduling system experienced a temporal anomaly" and rescheduled the interview for the correct year. The candidate, reportedly a good sport about the whole situation, replied: "No problem! I was worried I'd have to bring a sports almanac and warn people about future events."

The AI's Defense: "Tuesday" Was Correct

User reviews of scheduling AI tools reveal this isn't an isolated incident. Multiple recruiters report AI assistants that confidently schedule meetings for wrong years, wrong months, or occasionally wrong centuries (one user claimed their AI tried to schedule a call for 1925, though this may be apocryphal).

The issue stems from how AI scheduling tools parse date information from emails, calendars, and availability data. When someone says "schedule for next Tuesday," the AI has to infer the date based on context. Sometimes it gets confused about which year "next Tuesday" exists in, especially near year-end when calendars transition from one year to another.

In this case, the AI apparently saw "December 10" as the next available date matching the hiring manager's free time, but forgot to verify that December 10, 2024 has already come and gone. The AI wasn't technically wrong that December 10 is a Tuesday - it just picked the wrong December 10 out of the infinite series of December 10ths throughout human history.

The Lesson For Humans Using AI Scheduling

If you're using AI scheduling assistants, maybe check the calendar invites before they go out. Revolutionary concept, I know. But between AI tools that schedule meetings in the past, book interviews for 3 AM because they misunderstood time zones, and occasionally invite the wrong people to confidential interviews, automation is creating new and creative ways to embarrass yourself.

The candidate in this story was understanding about the error. Other candidates might assume your company is either hilariously disorganized or conducting some kind of avant-garde interview process involving theoretical physics. Neither is a great impression.

Here's a tip: if your AI scheduling tool is sending calendar invites, add a human review step before they go to candidates. It takes 10 seconds and prevents you from accidentally inviting people to attend meetings that already didn't happen.

The Bottom Line

AI scheduling tools are great until they try to schedule you into yesterday. The technology is impressive - it can read calendars, identify availability, coordinate time zones, and send professional meeting invites. It just occasionally forgets that time moves forward and we can't attend meetings that exist exclusively in the past tense.

If you're a candidate and receive an interview invitation for a date that's already passed, know that it's probably not a test. It's probably just AI being confidently incorrect about temporal mechanics. Reply politely, suggest a date that exists in the actual future, and maybe ask if the company is hiring QA testers for their scheduling bot.

And if you're a recruiter using AI scheduling tools, do everyone a favor and check the year before sending invites. Your candidates will appreciate not having to explain that time travel is not currently available as a transportation option for job interviews.