Dear applicant,
After five rounds of interviews, three personality evaluations, a lie-detector test, electroshock therapy, and a metaphysical ascension into the unconscious plane, we’ve decided to go with a candidate whose experience more closely aligns with the listed position.
To be honest, the job you applied for was what we in the HR section of Dante’s third circle of hell (Gluttony Division) would refer to as a “ghost posting.” Not in the sense that the job you applied for wasn’t real, but that we would prefer a candidate who is willing to dedicate not only their living flesh vessel to the position but also at least five to ten years of their ethereal form in purgatory limbo towards furthering our business’s growth. Per your question about benefits and upward mobility, there was a possibility for a small 4 percent raise during this transitional period. However, your health care benefits would be cut at that time (for obvious reasons).
While this position was listed as an entry-level job, our ideal candidate would have a billion years of experience, with relevant skills tracing back through space and time to a period where single-celled protoplasms categorized our existence. Your current status as a multicelled organism naturally impedes your ability to work at the utmost efficiency needed for the job. Therefore, the Panopticon chose another entry-level client whose résumé listed “A Billion Years of Experience Plus One.”
We consider our business like a family. That’s why we personally mined the data of every member of your close and extended family through a series of phishing schemes to create exact one-to-one AI replicants of them, who then served as dutiful guards in our patented, streamlined Artificial Panopticon Resume Sparser. This led to a more holistic hiring process that let us get a glimpse into the Real You. And while your artificial family dog gave you mostly glowing reviews, your mother was concerned that you personally guilt-tripped her into feeling like a bad parent because of the period in your teens when you stopped attending church. This gave us pause regarding your ability to provide stellar customer service to like-minded mothers and raised serious doubts that you would properly cater to Jesus the Redeemer if his third coming did, in fact, materialize.
We also found your answers to interview question #337, “Traverse the seedy underbelly of your subconscious’s id and articulate to us your most primal desire, and how you and a coworker with separate sadomasochistic tendencies might resolve a dispute,” derivative and contrived. Here at HR, we’re always looking for ways to avoid doing our job, so hiring candidates with expert conflict-resolution skills is of the utmost importance to us.
Additionally, the leeches we attached to your body in stage four of the interview process reported low iron levels, which raised concerns among our fiery cubicles about whether you would have the stamina to work through several unscheduled overtime/holiday shifts.
We sincerely thank you for applying and allowing us here at HR to justify our salaries for a little while longer as the world burns around us. We welcome you to reapply for the part-time barista position in the future.
— Starbucks
