<human>: Could you distill the essence of the text into 1-3 sentences?

I landed a job just the other day. The hiring manager of the company (let's call him Joe) asked me to call to discuss the start date and salary expectations.

During the conversation, Joe asks me what I'm looking for with my salary. I let him know that, with my current financial situation, I need $89k. Joe generously states that some "padding" would be nice, and tells me the offer stood at $95k.

Fast forward a few days, and I get my offer letter in the mail. It says $91k.

Now, by no means am I disappointed by the amount. It's still more than I need. I accept the offer, but ask Joe (via email) if there was potentially a clerical error, given that we had discussed $95k. He responds, claiming that the $4k difference would be made up with the performance-based bonus.

Now, I have been replying to Joe's emails 3-5 minutes after receiving them. I was a bit busy, so I took longer to respond to the "your bonus was included in the salary negotiation" email. He then follows up with _another_ email, claiming that he'd be willing to "change the terms" if I was having second thoughts.

This to me is a bit of a red flag. It _seems_ as though he was testing the waters to see if he could pay me less than initially agreed upon. It also seems strange to me for salary negotiations to include bonuses, when generally bonuses are granted at the end of the year based on the company's and individual's performances.

I'm especially wary of this because I had a previous employer who took this sort of thing a step further. Things like:
"Oh, I promised you a better salary? Well, _obviously_ your bonus will cover that."
and even worse was:
 "Oh, I told you this was an 9-hour job? Well, _obviously_ I didn't include your lunch hour when negotiating hours."
<bot>: Agreed on $95k during salary negotiations, offer letter said $91k. Employer said my bonus would make it $95k. Is this a red flag, or is this normal and am I just overthinking this?