Rejection letters: what if...?

What if rejection letters, when they bother to send them, actually said something interesting and useful? What if, instead of say-nothing pieces of corporate pablum, they informed, amused, guided? What if they just told the brutal bitter truth, without any sugar coating?

What if a company, in the rare instance where they bother to send anything at all, also set up a feedback or question channel? So there could actually be some real communication? Do I mean waste some employee's precious salary time to actually respond to follow-up questions by useless people? Yes indeed. Useless people still talk, they might have even been customers. They might not be so useless if you communicate directly - maybe their lives don't fit into predefined little boxes on a computerized application form. You never know. 

Here are some rejection letters that will never get written:

Brutal Truth

Dear Applicant,

 In analyzing your application, we determined that you have more experience and education than our managers. Hiring you would make them uncomfortable, and we worry that you might not be controllable nor fit into our corporate environment. 

Please stay away. You make us nervous.

The Management

Honest

Dear Applicant,

We get so many applications that we just let the computer sort them out. There's not really much difference between all of you, so it comes down to this: since you didn't know anyone in the store, we didn't hire you. Next time, remember that boot licking is a valid tactic.

I'd say that we wish you the best of luck in your employment search, but that would be a lie. I really don't care.

If by chance you become friends with one of our managers, re-apply. If not, don't bother.

The Management

Sadistic

Dear loser:

If we wanted to hire you we would have called. Some technocratic MBA in our company requires us to notify useless toads such as yourself whether we want to or not. If it were up to me, you'd remain in suspense forever and I could do something more useful with my time than write form letters. You really don't deserve anything.

We looked at your application. It tells us that you're a washed-up, unsexy basket case who can't do any better than to apply for a no future, part-time seasonal position doing menial tasks that could be done better by a monkey. Your life is a waste, you'll never amount to anything, and there's a reason your love life isn't working.

In case you're too stupid to figure that this letter means NO, it does. We don't want you, we never will, and please don't ever come here again, not even to buy a cork to plug your leaky butt.

Mr. de Sade, personnel.

Feel good

Dear Valued Applicant,

We loved everything you've done with your life, but regrettably cannot hire you at this time. 

Our store is small, and even though you seem wonderful, we just don't have room to hire that many people. We'd really like to hire everyone, but we can't.

Thank you for considering us as your employer. We are honored by your confidence that we could make you happy in the workplace. Thank you again.

Thank you for your time and we're so very sorry that we can't hire you.

Have a nice day and thank you again,

The loving, caring personnel department

Poetic
Electrons flash, phosphor glows,Information flows luminous.
Eighty-three words, a life.
Digital Freud 101010... 101010;
Analysis/cognition/evaluation/calculation/correlation.
Helium II heart.
Conclusion.
Result.
Sorrow.

Paranoid

How did you find us? Why did you apply? It seems you have knowledge, experience and skills. It says you work hard for low pay and don't mind. Are you here to take my job? I have fifteen cats and three turtles to feed! You can't do that to me! I have needs, and you're trying to destroy my life. Did John in human resources put you up to this? Well, I'm on to you now. I know he's wanted me out ever since I broke his beer stein at the office party five years ago. I see what you're up to and it won't work! I'll stop you! You can't work here! I'm not afraid of you! I say who gets hired, your plot is foiled! You won't infiltrate my company. Your evil attempt to destroy me is over. Terminated. 

Bonkers

I had a pair of socks that looked just like you. They didn't have any toes. Maybe you have toes, though. Socks are nice. I want them back, but rodents took them away for nesting material. I never saw them again, just like I'll never see you. 


Depressive

I don't know why you want to work. There's really no point. It does no good to work when the government and the banks will just take your money away and leave you shivering in the cold. What would you buy with it? Stupid things that you'd never remember ten years from now. Buying things only makes you feel better for a few minutes, then you get the bills and feel worse because now you're more broke than when you started. You only think you need a job, but you don't. You don't need anything, because nothing matters. Whatever you do, you'll die eventually, probably alone and unaided. That's life. It's all dark, there's no hope. Your money will run out, you grasped at the wrong straw and we're throwing you into the raging current to drown, bloat and wash out to sea. We only hire people like myself, who see reality for what it is.


Short, direct and obscene

Hey Asshole!

Who the fuck told you that you could work here? You can't. Your application wasn't good enough for us. Looks to me like you don't know shit about anything, so don't come back later knockin' on my door. It's closed. 

What do you think we are, a charity? We're not here to save the world, pal. We're here to get rich. So we owe you nothin'.

My asshole boss makes me respond to jerks like you, so between you and me, I'm gonna tell you some things. The pay here sucks, it's not even enough to buy cat food, there aren't any bonuses, they ask for unpaid volunteer hours to "stay competitive" but the shithead bosses all drive new fricken Audis. Figured out where you'd fit in? Yeah, right in the shit, up to your eyebrows.

Louie, personnel

We are the one percent

There are 49 million people living in poverty right now in this country, almost a fifth of the population.

You're one of them. 

I'm not. I have a fat bank account, a stable of luxury cars, properties all over the world. My mistress gets more money per year than the operating budget of Burkina Faso. I also happen to be the boss of the huge conglomerate that owns the store where you applied.

I don't care about you, because you're poor. If you weren't poor, you wouldn't have tried for a low-paying temporary job and I wouldn't be sending this message. 

You'll stay poor and I'll stay rich. There's not a damn thing you can do about it. We own the government. They won't help you.
Geeky

:-(

Succinct
No!

Informative

Dear Applicant,

Our state-of-the-art job applicant analysis software scanned your application. While we cannot give you a favorable response to your request for a job, here are the results of the analysis:

• The computer determined that based on your experience and education that you're older than our standard hiring age. Perhaps you should try babysitting.
• Your skill set was excessive for someone who would just be selling knick-knacks, expensive little machines that sit on a counter, gizmos and cookbooks. You would just be bored.
• We received over 1204 applications for this position. Some were recommended by our employees. They get the jobs; you don't.
• Your use of words such as "consequentially", "numerically" and "mise en place" place you outside of one standard deviation of the current norm for Pacific State Standard American English. Our customers wouldn't understand a word you would say. 
• Your experience in this exact position was insufficient. You indicated three years or more of sales experience, but it was not in one of our stores nor a virtually identical store run by a competitor. We require that you did the same thing for at least ten years, sold the same items and were never promoted.
• The position you applied for requires a total lack of ambition. It's seasonal, so no matter how well you perform you will be released from employment on December 25th at 1:00 am after you finish cleaning and re-stocking the store.
• Currently, we prefer applications filed in text mode: U will C 4 me is gr8t 2 wrk @ your biz. This communication form wastes less server space.

We hope this information will be helpful to you in the future, and that it will console you to know that there was really no possible way for you to get this job short of a close personal connection with the Management.

So long,

The Management

Rejection slips, corporate America's way of saying they care

You're going downtown!

Sur la Table
in this case, "Dans la Poubelle" would be more accurate.

Well, amazingly enough, I got an answer from Sur La Table, one of the places that requires an online job application. It came from someone named donotreply@surlatable.com. They said this:

"Thank you for your interest in Seasonal Sales Associate position at Sur La Table.

After careful consideration, the decision has been made to pursue candidates whose qualifications more closely meet our needs.

Thank you,

Sur La Table"

I doubt that even an A.I. could have formulated a less human response, nor one that gave less information as to what, exactly I didn't qualify for. "More closely met our needs". OK, fine. In what way? What needs does a store hawking cooking supplies have, if not knowledge of the goods being sold and sales experience? 

What the hell is "careful consideration"? Do they have "careless consideration"? Did someone get a message stating, "We carelessly considered your application, and after a few beers, a kiwi martini and a couple of drinks we'd rather not name, we decided we don't like you. Go away.". What would the careless process be, exactly? Darts? Dice? Cockroach races?

I also love the use of passive voice: "The decision has been made". As though they didn't make it, as though some other agent made the decision, but they're going to keep who it was vague. Perhaps a well-worn ouija board kept in the closet for seasonal hiring? Did someone channel a nameless dybbuk out of the void?

Then they "pursue candidates". Right. Hello! If YOU were pursuing candidates, they wouldn't need to fill out your application! YOU would contact THEM! Get this: candidates pursue YOU. That's how this whole nasty, degrading, depressing evil corporate mindfuck works. They apply, you reject. Get it? Just say "contact", "follow up" "respond to". Not "pursue". Wrong verb. 

This said, I do like Merriam-Webster's definition of "pursue": "...overtake, capture, kill, or defeat". Maybe I should count my blessings and be happy they're not "pursuing" me after all.

It's not like I was applying for the position of CEO. I was going for Seasonal Sales Associate. Expendable, temporary, and not necessarily highly qualified. So WTF? I didn't list elf boots as an asset? Not enough, ho ho ho?

Your application was processed. You don't fit in. The Decision Has Been Made. Go away, and never come back. You're off the table.

I had a painting gig (watercolor) in the area, so I decided to pop in and see what their "more qualified" people looked like. They looked kind of like this, from memory:

The design creeping under the woman on the right's top is a tattoo. She is not sheltering a large green creature on her breast. Yes, her top did plunge like gnocchi dropped into hot water.

None of them looked to be over thirty years old. Some of them didn't even look like they'd hit twenty-five. Is age a qualification?

No. You can't have a job, and other rants

This one's political.
After my desultory attempts at finding some form of supplementary employment, I've come across all kinds of corporate strategies to reduce all people to something resembling a cockroach immediately after molting, and to treat them accordingly. Then I sometimes have flashes of insight on other issues, like the tax structure. So, here they are, my comments and recipes for moving everything a micron closer to utopia.

Taxes
I tried to send a message to President Obama via the White House web page, but all I got was a bunch of nonsense error messages, an endless "connecting" message and finally the message above. In other words, I got the electronic runaround. Isn't it great that politicians can make their web sites act just like real politicians?

All I tried to say is why don't you tax the rich when things aren't going so well, and lower their taxes when they are? In other words, create some incentive.

Maybe it was too simple an idea for a political computer server to understand. Maybe they just don't want to hear about taxes. I would think that some index exists out there that gives the current pulse of the economy, and could be used as a tax index. I mean, there are all those fancy PhD economists out there who constantly create indexes for this, indexes for that.

The way I see it, giving money to the rich won't help anyone. When is the last time a Wall Street mogul bought you a drink or your bank gave you real interest? Yeah, that's what I thought. The rich just invest their money offshore where they get a high yield. Maybe they'll buy a company and outsource everything except highly paid executive positions to a far-away land where workers are paid in some currency with an exchange rate measured in peanuts.

But if by helping the common man, elevating the middle class to a livable position, they can save on their taxes, maybe it will be like giving them a heart. Like virtual caring. Like Robin Hood's spirit really does live on, somewhere, instead of the current "steal from the poor and give to the rich". 

Applying for employment
While I'm being political might as well throw some well-deserved rotten end-of-season tomatoes at the inhuman, degrading policies of Corporate America when it comes to the hiring process.

Psychobable
Once company brags about being a Fortune 100 Best Companies to Work For. Perhaps, once you're hired this could be true. However, their hiring process leaves a lot to be desired. Like their fifty question psychobabble personality-id-ego screening test that applicants must take online. I suppose some squinty-eyed human resources cyborg considers this to be the best, most accurate way to eliminate everyone who will not fit into their corporate culture. No matter if they're applying to be a janitor, serve cheese, shoot photographs, bake bread or cut meat. It's obvious that all these people will have identical personality profiles. Isn't it? Yes, the HR people say so! The strange thing is that it seems like this barrier comes up even before questions like can you really cut a slab of beef into recognizable (and sellable) steaks and roasts? Or do you know an f/stop from a unsharp mask? Nah. What matters is your karakteristika, comrade. Skills are nothing next to a personality that scores 85% or better on their little Turing test.

Feedback, now you want feedback?
Most application processes are online, automated, unseen by actual humans, never pondered by human brains. I imagine that there's some kind of filter algorithm that searches for key words, correlations and Spock's brain to determine if you're fit to enter into the ranks of their poorly paid part-time seasonal minions. So, they are very good at checking everything as you apply, moving data from page to page and finally, when the SUBMIT button has sent your entire life flashing through the ether to their server, sending a APPLICATION RECEIVED message to your e-mail. After that, unless some wannabe AI found you intriguing, apt and compatible, you may hear nothing. Ever. Or, you may receive an impersonal, passive voice message that gives you no information on where you failed to measure up, but leaves no doubt that applying to their company again would be a tragic waste of time.

Strangely enough, right after I posted this I got a rejection notice written in Corporatespeak, basically saying to get lost and stay that way.

It seems that the people who have found jobs typically knew someone in the company who could get them around the system. I wonder how they scored on their karakteristika.

How do I know you're not...
Some companies assume you're guilty until proven innocent. They want to know you pay your taxes, aren't some kind of criminal, haven't plotted against a government (except perhaps some enemy of the USA), that you feed your fish and are kind to stray cats. All this before you're even considered for a job. No investigation of your entire background by a company who can't even guarantee that their data will be safe from hackers. I want to investigate them, too. Can I see if the people looking at my social security number, address, driver's license, etc won't run off and sell the data to identity thieves? No? Why not? It's not like these corporations really hold the moral high ground here. They do hold lots of lawyers, though. So you hope that your information is safe and that if it isn't that someone will make things right. Yes, I'm dreaming. It probably isn't and no, they won't.


Your information is safe with us!
Some companies are small and do things the old-fashioned way. They accept your application on a standard form that's somehow different for every place I've applied to. Then they toss it into a drawer. Safe. Secure. Don't think about what could happen late at night when you can't sleep. Maybe I'm wrong, and they shred it as soon as I walk out the door. From all the calls I've received, this may indeed be the case.


Immigration status for sale
I just read that some senators want to give some kind of residential visa to anyone who comes in with cash and buys a home over $500,000. Yep, half a million bucks. Once again, handing something to the real estate industry on a platter.

Actually, this is a good idea. Except for the "buy" part. I'd much rather see "build" than buy, since that would employ a lot more people and not just give more gravy to the real estate industry. Building a home means new permits, so local governments get some money. It hopefully uses designers, architects, landscape architects, engineers, interior designers to determine its form and function. Then there are all the materials - and these could be required to be from the USA. Then there's the small army of people who will pound those nails, lift those trusses and polish off the new American dream home.

You're not corporate
You've done everything the qualifications list, or better. You know the software. You know the processes. You'd be great at this job... except... you're not corporate. You never did these things while working in the bowels of a large company. You never managed corporate people. You didn't do what you did in the corporate way. You're not one of us, your resume is non-standard. You know too much, yet you know too little. We're not talking to you. So what if the qualifications demand you know 27 technical computer programs, speak 12 different languages, are able to pilot a hovercraft, can prepare sauce béarnaise with five variations, have experience working with naked mole rats in their native habitat and can type 178 words per minute? You're not qualified unless you're corporate.

The job situation: December 2010

To date, not one of the people I contacted for a kitchen job has called me back. Not all that surprising for those who just said to drop off a job application. A bit more surprising in the case of Matt Woolston of The Supper Club and David Feldman at Matteo's Pizza and Bistro, since they had been communicating up until I met the enigmatic Mr. Feldman.

Granted, I was asking them for something, not the other way around. If they'd never said to keep in touch, or that they would contact me, I'd have no issue. But they did. Shouldn't this mean that they should at least follow up with an e-mail?  

I would have understood if he'd said, "We only hire people with previous restaurant experience, and being in a culinary arts program does not count." Even, "Call us when you complete the program." Even "Go away and never come back." That would have been direct and straightforward. But "I'll contact you when I'm not busy" leaves an expectation that my qualifications were acceptable and that hiring at some future date could be a possibility - and that further communication would actually happen.

I continued for a while to send updates to Matt Woolston, who had previously replied almost immediately. Now, the rule had become absolute silence on his part. Ditto for Mr. Feldman, as the messages were cc'ed to him.

I find it very strange that prior to actually meeting them, these people replied quickly to my e-mails, and were more than willing to communicate. Yet, strangely after meeting with Dave Feldman, neither he nor Matt Woolston would even acknowledge my existence. My past experience hadn't changed - in fact, I'm more qualified now than I was then due to having completed more lessons and prepared more dishes in class. Yet, absolute silence.

I started to ponder what factor could have caused such a drastic change of attitude. I had gone to the interview well dressed, with short, clean hair. I spoke clear English, and did not ask for an advanced position nor too much money (unless "anything minimum wage or above" classifies as "exorbitant").

Could it be that I was not the typical nineteen year old student looking for his first job? Could it be that actual experiences and a life were a liability? Could these people actually be practicing age discrimination? If David Feldman was not practicing age discrimination, wouldn't he have asked me to fill out a job application as proof? He could always trash the application when I left, but at least I'd have felt that he was at least somewhat sincere.

I talked to some friends about looking for work when you're no longer under 25. One said to die my hair, the darker the better. Another said to eliminate all college degrees from my resume. "Lie about your restaurant experience" added another. One wise person said, "Do all three. It can't hurt, and since they're not hiring you when you're honest, what have you got to lose?". Another said, "Too bad they only want people with no experience or other skills that could really be useful - like photography and sketching. Not to mention having eaten food in a lot of restaurants in a lot of different places so they know what it should taste like. Guess they just want young and cheap." As opposed to older and cheap, I suppose.

Perhaps saying "I'll get in touch when I'm not busy" is equivalent  to the "emergency powers" clause of a banana republic's constitution, where all kinds of rights are granted to the people, but can be suspended under certain conditions. All the dictator need do is declare the conditions present and suspend all constitutional rights indefinitely. So, presumably he knew he would always be busy, thereby negating his need to ever recontact me. This still doesn't explain Matt Woolston's silence, but at least it's an explanation that any Vulcan would accept.