Tuesday, March 10, 2015

Waste my time. Please!

Again - sorry for the delay in posting. It has been busy (still)...which brings me to the current topic to post about.

Time. We all want more of it, and I'm assuming none of us want it to flutter away.

I've decided that people wasting my time has become one of my top pet peeves (and it takes a lot to get into that upper echelon, my friends.) At work, where things are already hectic, this is amplified.

To wit, can I just say, I am SICK of students who don't do their homework. There has been a slew (or a plague) of wannabe interns recently.  It's great to want to intern at a nonprofit, since we can't pay you - we can hopefully impart some real world experience and plump up your resume a bit. (I don't have interns label brochures, I give them real stuff to do.)

There are just a few things I ask for on my end.
1. Use spellcheck. It's not hard, right? So it's very, VERY telling to me when someone sends me an email like this:

Subject line: Hello
You didn't have me at hello. This subject line actually looks like spam to me, and I half expect the next line to read something like, "RK, cuddle up with some hot bored housewives tonight!" Yes, I have gotten that email. Talk about barking up the wrong, um, tree.

Email: "I my name is Jessica Rabbit (OK, not her real name, but wouldn't it be fun if it was?) and I am a stutdent at XX College. I am geting my BA..."

I mean we live in the age of technology! We no longer have to hand-write letters and even then, well shit - you could use a dictionary. How good of a student are you if you can't even spell student? I'm not looking for any stutdents, Jessica.
This tells me you A. Didn't take the time to use spellcheck, B. Didn't think about it, which makes you a bit of an idiot, or C. Didn't think it mattered, which also makes you a bit of an idiot. It also makes me think that D. You don't pay attention to detail, which WILL NOT HELP YOU in a nonprofit setting. We don't have drones or worker bees to clean up after your mistakes.

2. Do some freaking homework. 
"I would love to learn more about your organization and what you do and how it functions." 

Would you? Too bad. Because I have a whole damn website which YOU SAW TO GET MY CONTACT INFORMATION, but obviously did not read.

3.  Get a semi-professional-sounding email. 
Or use the free one that comes with your student registration. 
Because "iadorerainbowsandunicorns@..." just doesn't sound like you're very serious about...well, anything. Or maybe you just drop a lot of acid in your spare time. 

Incidentally, our board president once got an application from someone who not only had zero experience, but whose email began with "hotpussy99@..."

It's like Mr. RK says. It doesn't take all kinds of people to make a world, we're stuck with the kinds we have.