Author’s Note: World Wide Technology is a real company in St. Louis, Mo. I really did apply for a job there for the summer of 2024, and they really did only reject me this past August. And before you ask, yes: I really sent this letter (with my resume attached) to the CEO, Chairman, President, COO, Head of HR, and of Course, Mr./Ms./Mrs./Mx. Talent Acquisition.

Dear Mr./Ms/Mrs./Mx. Talent Acquisition,

I hope that I find you well and rested this day, and that you are excited to engage in your labors. My name is Sam Lustgarten, and I applied to be a Finance Intern at your fine organization during the summer 2024. When I saw that World Wide Technology, a veritable institution of information technologies in my own humble Midwestern hometown, had an opportunity like “Finance Intern—2024,” I was jubilant. Ecstatic, even. I felt goosebumps rise across my shoulders as my feet involuntarily began a complex tap-dance number. To imagine myself, a humble undergrad with nothing more than college credits and a taste for elaborate language, as a Finance Intern in the summer of 2024 was such an emotional balm that it single-handedly got me through the stress, toll and frustration my father’s triple bypass surgery had wrought upon my family.

Often my mother looked upon me and asked, “Oh Sam, my son, my heart of hearts and most cherished of all cherished, you have been nothing if not the spitting image of good cheer and resolve this summer. How have you endured the toils and hardships that your father’s heart hath wrought?” And I would say, holding her shoulders to fuel the empty tanks of her emotional fortitude, “Because I know that God is putting us through this for a reason. That today, we may be helping my father put his pants on, but tomorrow, I shall be a Finance Intern for World Wide Technology, and our family will never be the same!”

When I sent in my application, I cried with joy. Victory was assured, it must have been. At this time of my life, for an opportunity like this to appear? This was not merely fate, but something grander: the will of some greater divine figure, writing my destiny into stars that, I believed, were scheduled to fall over World Wide Technology in the summer of 2024. Yet after filing my application in August 2023, I heard little in September, and nothing in October. Restless but patient, restive yet resolute, I decided to do what generations of young, pretty damsels did whilst waiting for their fellas to return from the front lines.

I waited.

I waited, and waited, and waited as November turned to March and March turned to June 2024. I was lured by other offers, swayed by almost better deals and nearly seduced by the riches of America’s media-content landscape, but I was led not into temptation. For I stayed true to my destiny, knowing that I would be at World Wide Technology during the (late) summer of 2024.

But then, in August 2024, I received the wretched news. What was, I thought, a promising year turned into my annus horribilis as I received the note: “Dear Sam, We wanted to update you on the status of position 23-1310- Finance Intern – 2024 that you applied for has been filled by another candidate. We encourage you to visit our career center for other employment opportunities that you may be interested in. Sincerely, Talent Acquisition.” 

That night I cried myself to sleep. I cried all the next day, and the day after that. I told my mother and she has yet to break her deep depression, spending her days knitting by the fireside and wondering how the world could be so cruel to her favorite youngest son. I told a famous Stanford professor (whose identity will remain a secret to preserve his/her/their neutrality and confidentiality), and he/she/they became so despondent that he/she/they have not spoken for weeks. 

My emotional distress warped itself into a fiery ball of rage. After all, how can an information technology company be a trusted resource for clients when its own HR systems let their faithful applicants endure silence, only to be turned down around the time the applied-for position would have ended? How can Mr./Ms./Mrs./Mx. Talent Acquisition claim to acquire talent, when it cannot reject an applicant without breaking the basic grammatical rules of the English language (see: first sentence of the letter, which abandons its own premise before it can even utter Finance Intern – 2024)? In fact, how can World Wide Technology claim to offer detailed, best-in-class technological service, when it has a typo in its name (worldwide, of course, being just one word, not two)?

But then, I realized, such a miscarriage of justice as this must not be your fault. After all, the Crowdstrike outage may have completely overwhelmed your systems. Or, perchance, there must have been some dreadful client, unaware of the prestige you bear, that must have made you feel, Mr./Ms/Mrs./Mx. Talent Acquisition, overburdened, underappreciated, and dare I say, quite irascible. Something, anything, must have made you unusually frazzled, because I know you did not mean to be so careless as to leave my application aside. No, no: the Mississippi itself would have to flood the halls, wash away the rafters and tear down the walls of that majestic headquarters of yours in Westport Plaza, to keep me away from you. Because, being a company that does not just “envision a future,” but “creates it,” I know that there is no possible way one could slip through your systems without something absolutely dreadful occurring since I filed my application. In fact, it would not surprise me at all if my application was never even read, perused or even accessed, because of how impenetrable your impressive anti-ransomware technologies truly are.

But in the meantime, Mr./Ms/Mrs./Mx. Talent Acquisition, I am re-attaching my resume to this electronic letter. For while you may struggle and endure with your current challenges, I am positive that, should you condescend to read my resume, you will find that I have the necessary tools, attributes, skills, experiences, and can-do disposition to truly make World Wide Technology beloved in the St. Louis area and beyond. For is it not the mark of a true believer in something, to desire to spread its benevolence worldwide? Until then, pray be safe and secure in the knowledge that all goodness and kindness in the world will never leave you, as long as you care for everyone, as you care for me.

With My Best Regards,

Samuel R. Lustgarten