Grampa, tell us a story

[drwex]

Inspired by a comment of coraline's, herewith one of the more amusing occurrences of my job-hunting career.

As I was finishing my PhD I decided that if I was going to stay in the Boston area I had to pretty much carpet-bomb the downtown with resumes. This was a stupid decision, but hey I was naive. One of the Big Financial Companies downtown that I emailed a resume to sent me back a physical letter. On this paper letter they complained of difficulty in scanning my resume into their "OCR system" and suggested that I redo it in a "mono spaced font such as Courier" so that they could process it.

It slowly dawned on me that what they had done was take my emailed resume, print it out, and feed their printout into their scanner. Which had then failed. Someone then had to type my info into their form complaint letter so they could snail-mail it to me.

I fired back a response - also a written letter - explaining that (a) I wasn't responsible for the bad printout they had, since I had EMAILED my resume and (b) they could reformat and reprint it themselves if they really had to but (c) would they like to explain to me why I should work for a company that was so clearly institutionally moronic?

I never got a response to that one.

Comments

[coraline]

i'd heard this story before from someone (i think LNF?) but didn't remember who the protagonist was :)

[sweetmmeblue.livejournal.com]

I also remember you posting the two letters on your office door.

[drwex]

That's right. Which is how LNF saw it and probably relayed the story.

[unseelie.livejournal.com]

Thats one of the best things i've ever read.

Thank you.

[quezz.livejournal.com]

I think it's good to tell off a company if you're willing to risk not being liked. I don't think it hurt you any! :)

Hi, BTW.