I've received an awful lot of rejection letters this job season, but all of them arrived on paper, on school letterhead, in envelopes. Get the idea?
Today I get an e-mail marked "high priority" from an administrative assistant. It says simply "Dear Trill Wing, Please read the attached letter. Thank you." And the attached letter is lovingly titled "Doc2.doc." Not even a PDF on school stationery with a scanned department chair signature. Boo!
As an added flourish, the signature of the administrative assistant includes "Happy New Year!"
I guess what's worst of all, really, is that this is the job that I totally wanted and felt I was a good fit for. And so did Fantastic Adviser, who went out of her way to write a special letter for this position. And it never feels good to hear that the school at which you thought you had the best chance didn't even think you merited a phone interview.
Still, I'm not so much miffed that I didn't get the position (since I'm happy in my current job) as I am about the utter lack of courtesy.
Oh yes, you're definitely on notice, CSUF Liberal Studies Department. On notice you are.
6 comments:
Rejection by e-mail is bad enough, but I do reserve special hate for the rejection by e-mail attachment.
I got one that had a blank message with the attached file "letter_to_those_not_interviewed.doc"
I don't know why I even bothered opening the attachment. The letter itself was quite nice, but the delivery method? Not so much.
Now that, is truly appalling. My deepest sympathies.
It's bad enough to get a rejection letter, but to get one like THAT!
So sorry...
Wow, don't they realize how incredibly insensitive that is? I'm sure you wouldn't want to be colleagues with people who'd be so clueless.
Wow, that is seriously tacky! Sorry to hear they did that. I got my own lovely rejection letter yesterday for a job that I wasn't even done sending in all of the materials for. They moved so quickly. The thing I liked about the letter though - it let me know right away that I was not being considered for an interview. I prefer to be strung along. Too few places just let you know outright that you're not being considered.
Now that is a post worthy of me... even better, I deign to admit. On notice, they are. What's with these people? Sometimes I think search committee members are a different species, in which gene mutations have removed their concern for others and courtesy (I'm being facetious here, knowing you like I are skeptical --is that strong enough-- of pop-biology references to gene-control of behavior). Maybe it's just something about the process of sitting on a committee that beats the sense out of people. Odd, didn't seem to happen on the search committee I sat on as a graduate student. But... I must have just missed it, I mean... people can't be held responsible for their own actions now can they?
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