I have a friend who recently took a position at a museum in a major city. The museum had also just interviewed four women for an assistant position in her same department.  The manager chose one, and never contacted the other three to tell them thank you, the position was filled. A few months down the road, the department had another position open up. The manager contacted the top candidate of those remaining three women and offered her the job. I hoped this candidate would say no out of principle, not wanting to work with such an insensitive group.  What she actually said was no, she was waiting to hear on another position; she was basically in the middle of not being politely contacted…again!!

THESE STORIES DRIVE ME BERSERK!!!! And they’re rampant. I’m told often and regularly, this is the way business is done these days. As an employer, you've got the power; you take what you need and move on. What happened to consideration and respect? I still think it would be appropriate to respond to everyone who took the time to mail a letter and resume, and I can’t fathom not getting back to candidates who were brought in for one, or sometimes repeated, interviews. Instead, the candidates are left hanging—should they call, when should they call, who should they call—and then they give up and try again in this impersonal, rude arena.

As these tides turn, some members of the writing profession—a business renown for editors not caring a whit if the writer waits two weeks, two months, or two years (an editor once took 15 months to reply to me on a synopsis and three chapters) before they deign to reply—may start to look pretty good. Yes, it's easy to find off-putting guidelines (this is a real example) like: STORY IDEAS: You may send yours to xxxxxxx. The magazine cannot respond to unsolicited ideas or manuscripts." (Hmm, didn't’t they just solicit ideas in their first sentence?)  Or to discover that to a large number of agents and editors (women's magazines, you know this means you), the answer to an email query is a non-answer, and it means NO. 

Indeed, the introduction of email has created a monster where agents and editors alike can be totally buried under virtual mailboxes filled with hundreds of missives from bona fide hopefuls and people who should never be allowed at a computer alike. One thoughtful solution? The agent or editor that accepts only snail mail. So before you groan your writer’s groan, and complain out loud to no one in particular, "You mean I’ve got to print and mail a letter?!" realize that more than likely you’ve found an organization that still believes respect and consideration go hand in hand with doing good business. By using snail mail, they’re weeding out the all the people who can't be bothered to write a query worthy of the time to print it out and mail it in the first place, and likely committing to answer the rest who do take the time to prepare professional paper submissions and SASEs. Bless you, all such writing industry professionals. And the jewels that reply to professional emails, like agents Gina Panettieri, Rita Rosenkranz, and Eve Bridburg, deserve their own star on Grub Street.

For one thing I now know for sure: life is about community, and community is about relationships. When everything else is stripped away, that’s what we always have left – each other. I think it’s a terrible 
shame to let heartless machines lure us away from humane relationships. Our younger generations, with technology in hand, or on the belt, or in the pocket, or in the backpack, or in the purse, are evolving a very different way of "relating," but whether it's business in the 1920s, or the 2020s, sooner or later, every one of these new young professionals is going to face up against what for them may be a terrible truth: It's never finally what you know, but who you know, and how you treated them.