Courtesy

Whatever happened to good old fashioned customer service? Simple things like the guy at the gas station that used to check the oil on the car and wash the windows. (Incidentally, I did recently see a television show where a family from Oregon tried to go on a road trip and ran into some trouble at the pump…namely, they had no idea how to work it, since in Oregon, you aren’t allowed to pump your own gas.)

Maybe I am just getting old, but when did the reaction from accidentally brushing against someone while walking along the sidewalk  turn from a simple apology into an invitation to a street brawl?

And the biggest frustration of mine right now… HR people that do no have the common courtesy to send you a response letter. Really folks, I am already stressed out looking for a job, putting together my resume, digging around on the Internet for possible job openings on sites like www.indeed.com and emailing you a cover letter and a resume for something that looks somewhat appealing through the cryptic job descriptions. Is it too much to ask for a quick email, even a form email? Let me know that you got what I sent.

Something simple like:

“Dear Out of Work Guy,

Thanks for sending your resume. We received it and we are looking at it. We hope you understand that we get 3 gazillion other resumes every time we post on Monster.com and we can’t reply personally to every single resume we receive.

This job closes on the XX day of XX month, if you haven’t heard from us by a week from that date, that means we have found someone that matches the job description a little closer than you do.

Thanks for applying to our company .

Regards,

Hiring Manager in the Mystical Cloud we call “job land.” “

Really, is that so hard to mail merge? Set up an auto-reply… that is all you need to do. It will make me feel so much better.