> A lawsuit to recuperate the wages and damage to the business might even be worth looking into.

No, probably not. Speak to any business owner who has been in a lawsuit and they'll likely tell you it's not worth the headache. A close relative told me that even if a customer straight up won't pay for a done job, he'd rather forgo the payment then deal with a lawsuit.

Lawsuits usually have:

1) monetary costs - those lawyers are very expensive

2) emotional costs - take a big mental toll to deal with

3) reputational costs - it goes in the public record. Next time a potential candidate googles your company, it might show up that you sued a former employee. Hopefully they read further to see if you were justified in doing so....

4) opportunity costs - you (hopefully) have better things to do with your time

If you are big enough, maybe you have a legal team to deal with this stuff. But even then, you have to choose your battles. A hired lawyer is still expensive and it's not worth going after small battles, even the ones you know you will win.

Also, as others have mentioned, it's not unreasonable to have a friend or relative look over your email communications during your interview process unless you were explicitly asked not to do so. In fact, it's a smart idea!

The Ford dealership quoted me wrong on a trade-in payoff and later tried to get me to pay it ($1000). Letter in the trash. Next one came on a law firm's letterhead quoting a bunch of stuff about a contract. In the trash.

Never heard from them again.

More extreme one -- my auto loan provider accidentally double-charged my bank account for the amount of my car loan payoff (it didn't bounce, either). They instructed me to go through my bank to get the second charge refunded as fraudulent (which I was able to do and I was refunded and happy within 4 days), but then on their end they also sent me a refund check for some reason. When I received the check I gave my auto loan provider a call and they told me they were sorry there is nothing they could do and I would have to cash it, so I gladly got the remaining $6k of my car paid off for free by their own human error. I already had the certificate from them showing the car was paid off and the account was fully closed at this point. One year later and it's still fully paid off on my credit report. They gave me free money. The error on their part was their system had no way of handling "what if our charges are reported as fraud and get yanked back". Well, that and sending out a check after the fact.

It makes me wonder at what $ amount they would have begun to care about their error and tried to correct it.

I had a client once who refused to pay for one particular day of working. They paid everything else, but not that particular day, which was odd. (It may have been a day I worked from home and didn't push any commits, so maybe that was the reason.)

I think it was about € 600. I spoke to a lawyer, may have written a letter threatening a lawsuit even, but the lawyer explained that it just wasn't enough to actually start a lawsuit over. Even if you win, lawsuits take a lot of time and energy. I just dropped it. And them, obviously.

A different case from the opposite side:

I'm currently looking at a disagreement with my previous phone provider. They charged me too much over the past year. I called them about it, and they wanted me to prove we agreed on the monthly fees I claimed, and not the ones they claim. But they can't claim we agreed on their fees, so I just stopped paying and switched to a different (better and cheaper) phone provider (which I should have done a long time ago anyway). They're threatening to cut my phone which already isn't with them. They want money from me, but yesterday I wrote them a letter explaining they actually owe me money.

I expect this will go away. They may register me somewhere as a bad-payer, but there's an appeal process that I expect will side with me, because the phone company can't prove a thing.

There are laws against employer retaliation. If that employer never asked him prior and he never lied, what crime was committed? The employer failed to do their due diligence. As others have said, it's VERY common to request assistance in drafting resumes/emails/letters when pursuing employment.

> what crime was committed?

Several kinds and several counts of felonious fraud, all prosecutable, just for starters. If they signed their employment contract, which they most certainly did, that's perjury. If it was mailed back to the employer, that's mail fraud, a felony; if emailed, that's wire fraud. Position was remote, but if they ever entered the office, then as many counts of trespassing, at least, unless they took lunch and returned, which would double the number of counts. If they logged into anything, such as VPN, or Office 365, etc., each instance a separate count of computer fraud. The felonies here stack up high and rapidly. I'm not sure why you'd believe any mistakes made by the employer could possibly have any affect on the prosecutability of this and other similar criminals committing similar crimes.

Writing your own emails or resume isn't required or expected. Some people have assistants that do a lot of work by proxy of you. Its just very awkward that it becomes noticeable in a negative manner in the workplace.

> or expected

That's news to me. I have always assumed the resumes I have been reading were written by the applicants themselves. I guess I was wrong.

Resume preparation services are common and easy to find, and though I've never used such services I am sure many people do and I would not view it as unethical as long as the resume accurately summarized experience and qualifications.

Many college hires will use their college's resume writing workshop, and there are also commercial options.

Also, friends and family.

Why wouldn't you get the single most important document in the application process reviewed and rewritten?

I hope it was carbon black ink on papyrus ))

Unless they were making like $500k a year, it will probably cost more in legal fees than you would get back

The only people who win in a lawsuit are the lawyers.