Saturday, April 7, 2007

Rocking the Passive Voice V

I’m never going to get through these if I don’t pick up the pace.

Thanks you for your interest in the rank open position in our department. I’m sorry to have to tell you the that position has now been filled.

The first thing to notice is the obvious lie involved in this person expressing regret about filling the department’s position. Of course he’s not sorry about that at all.

I know, I know. You’ll say he’s really just expressing regret that he has to tell me about it. But is that any better? It just means that, literally, this sentence expresses the guy’s regret that he happens to have a shitty job to do—namely, telling me that I didn’t get any job at all. Wow, that must be really hard for him, the poor fucker. I’m sure you all feel as sorry for him as I do.

But there’s also something else in this letter. Notice the gibberish in the first sentence. What the fuck is a “rank open position”? It’s nothing, of course. Absolutely nothing. I know what an “open rank position” would be, and I know what a “junior rank, open position” would be. But this neither of those. This is just a meaningless string of words written by a fucktard too lazy to proofread the PFO he’s sending to over 300 losers.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Maybe a 'rank open position' is an open position that stinks.

Pseudonymous Grad Student said...

I had a similar thought, Anon. And no doubt, this rejection letter came from a school so shitty that you can probably smell it from 50 miles up the interstate.

Anonymous said...

I think it's pretty clear that the idea here is to appear civil by distancing themselves from the slight. Seems disingenuous in this context, but it's clearly needed elsewhere on the web:

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/09/technology/09blog.html?hp=&pagewanted=all