I'm actually kinda impressed / amazed that you got the "bad reference" excuse blatantly. That area just seems murky for pretty much this exact reaction, most p

I'm actually kinda impressed / amazed that you got the "bad reference" excuse blatantly. That area just seems murky for pretty much this exact reaction, most places I've worked have had policies stating that you can't give negative references (only positive or decline to comment). All kinds of crazy stuff can go down in interviews and unless it's part of a trend, you just have to chalk it up to their loss. I had an interview where the hiring manager came back with lots of praise and offer forthcoming news, turn into "team could not reach consensus" in under 24 hours. People in interviews will come up with all sorts of crazy reasons not to proceed. Sometimes it's a turf war, sometimes it's thinking they need to protect themselves, sometimes it's some innocuous occurrence in the interview that sows enough doubt to not proceed. Your career is way more than the few incidents that will occur over it that make no sense, so I'd just not worry about it for now. More bad could come from trying to McCarthy your reference network than good based on one weird interview scenario :-).