Applications Are Hard, You Know!

I volunteered in the administrative manager’s office for volunteers at a hospital. The applications and correspondence I sorted through for the manager were kind of amazing in all the horrible ways. Here are a few things I encountered.

“Please use a black or blue ink pen to fill out this application,” crossed out with a neon pink glitter gel pen with the word “No” scribbled under it. Said applicant told us that she uses said gel pen for everything she fills out so that everyone knows it’s her. She said black or blue ink was “too ugly for my work.”

On another application, under the question, “What days/times are you available to volunteer?” I found the answer, “I love Jesus!” followed by a big X over the space for references and, “You don’t need two references. Jesus is my one and only reference.”

One another application, I found swear words peppered throughout the application, with the F-bomb being used as an adverb

I found overuse of chatspeak: nawt abl 2 spL NEthing longr thN 3 lttrs. Our application is pen-and-paper only, so the chatspeak text was handwritten.

One applicant filled the application out halfway, got bored, and left the rest blank. He called us up when we said we couldn’t process the application unless it was completed and promptly got into an argument with the manager. 

“[Manager], let me tell you how the real world works: you’re running a volunteer department. That means you need to bend over backward just to kiss my a** in gratitude that I’m bothering to give you the time of day. You can fill the rest of my application out for me if your paperwork is that important.”

The manager told him that if he couldn’t follow directions and curb his attitude, then his presence wasn’t welcome. Then, she hung up on him. He called back immediately and basically left a profanity-strewn message about the ancestry of everyone she happened to be related to. We were both speechless.

We also had an applicant who said that if we needed references, to chase them down ourselves and gave us two cell phone numbers and no other information. She basically ordered the administrative manager to hurry up and get it done because she wanted her paperwork completed in a timely fashion. She refused to acknowledge that it was her responsibility.

I told the manager that she was far more patient with these people than I would be.