But if pressed you can honestly say that you have no idea what the problem was, you performed your requests, and you were given no warning. In any case that was beyond your control and didn't turn into a real job.
IMHO it's better to cast around for the best possible honest framing of the issue.
One of them even codenamed it "the cloth of protection" lol.
As others have said, the correct thing to do here is to just not even list the job on the resume in the first place. No reasonable person expects every single short stint be listed on a resume. I’ve heard three and six months suggested as guidelines for the minimum lengths of jobs one should list. Anything shorter than that probably isn’t worth going into, as you’re still onboarding at that point. Also, people get sick, have sudden illnesses in the family, or otherwise can’t work for a couple months for loads of reasons.
And I concede that a policy of honesty might only make sense in some world views / ethical positions.
FWIW, there are ways to not reveal that info, but also not lie.
For example, if a recruiter / employer starts fishing for my current salary, I just say "I'm not going to talk about that, but ...", followed by some carefully worded signal about my general salary expectations.
If lying in this context doesn't bother you in the slightest, then maybe you won't see value in this approach.
So it is more like a 3 month gap.
> Jobs at this time are hard to come by. The biggest employers in the industry have laid off hundreds of thousands. There is a lot of competition for every position.
You don't. Omit that job.