You are severely overestimating HR's willingness to engage. If they are tardy enough to not be competent in managing basic employee expectations, they sure as hell are not going to maintain a grudge ledger against every candidate to target them.
My company used to blacklist employees that left. If you left the company they would never hire you back. They stopped doing that around 4-5 years ago.
I got that speech on the way out the door. I laughed and laughed, right in the cubicle where the HR lady (nice enough) was going through the process with me.
I was already in the mindset that the bridge had been burnt—by them, not me. Between the stress of quitting, the relief of having another job lined up, and now this bizarre empty threat to be blackballed from a place I’d never want to work for again…I just had to laugh.
Meanwhile, my F500 company fired a guy with cause. Two years later he was re-hired in an entirely different role. When discovered, my director was flabbergasted that HR had not permanently blacklisted him.
