I'll take "courtesy" for $700, please, Alex

Allow me to explain something.

Rejection in any form, while difficult, is needed. Hearing something to the effect of "I like you, but I don't think we are a match and we shouldn't continue dating" is cruddy to hear, yet it is final, finite, and a tangible answer to underlying questions. Similarly, "We have filled this position...Good luck with your search!" would be sad to read in an email.

But it would be an answer. Yet this simple task is sorely lacking in this job market.

I refuse to believe the economy is THAT tragic, THAT cumbersome, and a Human Resource Professional's position has become THAT horrifying and overwhelming that a 2 line email has become an impossibility. If I have taken the time to show interest in your company to the point that I am announcing my desire to work there, I deserve not only the professional recognition of a "yes or no," but the human dignity of it. When did we become a culture that was so jaded, even a "Go away" was too much effort? Really, America, I refuse to believe it.

We love rejection in the United States. We are the only language that employs multiple slang references for "I am taking this away from you and reveling in your disappointment!" (See "PSCH!" "Not," "Sucka," etc. for reference.) I am ASKING for a No...and yet...nothing.

The most obvious and pathetic byproduct of a lack of an answer, of course, is the faint hope that my resume is potentially lost on someone's desk (or, more delusionally, on a white board somewhere in an office as a team invents an amazing job for me and draws a lot of dollar signs near a flow chart that has my name on it.) Simply put - it makes me believe that I still have a shot. Because why not me? No, really - tell me. I'm asking you to. Tell me. Why not me?

I clearly haven't had my morning yoga class and ensuing Bloody Mary yet on this rainy New England morning - I'll snap out of it eventually.

In the meantime, Evil Company That Does Not Return Emails, a pox on you. Unless of course you're calling to offer me the job. In which case, I'm willing to change my answer.