I was finishing my PhD and applying for jobs. My significant other, K, got his PhD a few years earlier, and was applying for tenure-track jobs.
Professor X was one of the good guys (he was the one who told me that I shouldn't let anyone get away with saying I got a job due to affirmative action, since I had a great file and I deserved any offers I got). One day during that hiring season, Professor X phoned me and said his university (let's call it Confused State) planned to fill several tenure-track positions, and they wanted to interview K and me for two of them.
Three candidates were invited to interview at the same time, including K and me.
At my interview with the department Chair, much to my surprise, he informed me that the department had only one tenure-track opening. They also had a temporary postdoc position, from which one could eventually apply for a tenure-track job. He said it didn't matter to them which of K and I got which job.
He asked me which of us should get the tenure-track offer and which the postdoc. Should they offer the tenure-track job to me and the short-term position to K, or the other way around?
I was shocked at X's betrayal. I had been brought there under false pretenses.
I knew that I was terrible at thinking on my feet under pressure. I took a deep breath, and replied, almost without thinking, "Normally when hiring a senior person and a junior person for a senior and a junior position, the senior person gets the senior position and the junior person gets the junior position." That seemed at least like an obvious and innocuous statement.
K, X, and two other Confused State professors in my field were waiting for me outside the Chair's door, and asked how it went. When I told them, X and one of the other professors were furious at the third one, since he was on the hiring committee. It turned out that he had known that there was only one tenure-track opening, and he had misled his two colleagues. I was happy to learn that X hadn't in fact lied to me.
Eventually, K was offered the tenure-track assistant professorship and I was offered the temporary job.
K really wanted to be at Confused State for geographical reasons. But I wasn't willing to accept a postdoc position, when I already had tenure-track offers elsewhere. K was eager enough to go there that he would have been willing to take a temporary job in the hope that it would get upgraded later. We agonized at length, trying to figure out what to do.
Eventually, K came up with a good solution. K phoned the Chair and reminded him that he had left it up to us to say who should get which job. K asked the Chair to switch the offers. The Chair said he'd get back to him.
Some days later, the Chair phoned back. Downgrading K's offer didn't feel right to them. The department decided to upgrade my offer to tenure-track, without downgrading K's offer. At least we found out that they really were willing to offer me a tenure-track job.
I wasn't ready to forgive Confused State, and didn't accept the offer. The moral of the story is: don't mislead job candidates (or your colleagues). It isn't nice.