My Dear Suite101.com

Hi Guys:

Since your email came from "noreply@suite101.com" (an address I've learned is morally equivalent to "go₤µ¢λyourself@suite101.com") I can't write back to you, but of course the World Wide Web is indeed wide, and so I've decided to post a reply to your reply to my "application" to write for you.

In short: Go ₤µ¢λ yourselves.

Does that seem rude? Do I sound less-than-impressed by your considered and thoughtful response from "noreply@suite101.com"? Well let me try to put this in terms you genii (reach for your dictionaries--one genius, two genii) can understand:

If you were arrested, would you prefer that the charge sheet state:

"You are being charged with committing malicious parking in a handicapped zone"

--that being the sort of thing I suspect you do for kicks.

-or would you rather it read thusly:

"You are being charged with one of the following possible offences:
1) Mopery and dopery on the spaceways
2) Extreme flatulence in a public conveyance
3) Malicious parking in a handicapped zone
4) Knowingly and with malice aforethought bringing out photos of your children to show the unfortunate clerk while the lineup gets longer behind you at the grocery.
5) Keeping a number of cats exceeding the number of rooms in your home."

Me neither, so let me enlighten you as to your approach when dismissing someone who actually took a fair bit of time to adapt and edit some work your readers might have enjoyed while I was applying to write for you.

Rejection from employment, if presented as a form letter, should never imply that a human ever looked at the submitted samples. It's obvious no-one with eyeballs (or any other kind) has seen what I submitted.

In that case, why provide the following advisory?

Your application to be a Contributing Writer to Suite101.com has been declined for ONE of the following reasons:

* your areas of expertise and samples did not reflect the search interests of our Web audience;
* your educational and employment experience did not suggest authoritative expertise re the subject areas you wish to cover;
* the tone of your samples was better suited to a site either more or less formal than our own;
* your writing sample may have had serious errors in language use, structure, grammar, spelling, or punctuation;
* your writing suggested a first-person, experiential, or opinion-based approach to material rather than an objective journalistic style that quoted verifiable sources.

Due to volume of applicants and limited editorial staff and time we are not able to field inquiries requesting more specific reasons for declining this application.

To quote a sergeant I once worked for, "Why couldn't you just have told me to ₤µ¢λ off?"

If anyone had truly read the samples I sent, then you wouldn't need this broadsheet multiple-choice approach. You'd have been able to say "We're sorry, but we're really not looking for that sort of material." Or "Your work is far too classy for a $#17-ass pack of grammatical illiterates such as ourselves," or even "We're sorry, but you spell like a Brit, and we cater to the Alabama trailer-park demographic. They don't understand the word 'neighbour.'"

Instead, you ran my samples through some sort of filter designed to mine the money-making stuff. So if my spelling didn't suit, or my turn of phrase was maybe a tad over-elaborate, it wasn't going to get through. If I didn't submit samples on the topics you failed to specify you need covered, then it wasn't going to get through. If, in other words, any thought, reading comprehension, or intellect was required to make sense of my prose, that wasn't going to do it for Suite101.com.

However, I'd like to thank you for the laugh I got when I spotted the following at the bottom of your form letter:

You are welcome to reapply at a later date should your credentials and samples change. We wish you the best with your writing career and thank you for considering Suite as a publishing platform

Let me make a slight grammatical correction for the sake of clarity, albeit from a "first-person, experiential, or opinion-based approach to material rather than an objective journalistic style that quoted verifiable sources":

"₤µ¢λ off."

Now perhaps we understand each other a bit better.

Oh,I can handle rejection alright. But form-letter rejection trying to pretend anyone with authority, or even a human, saw my work gets right on my nuts, in case you genii hadn't guessed.