I am probably tougher on applicants than I should be. This is the magazine's influence: we learned to cheerfully bounce anyone who failed to follow our submission rules because 99% of the time, their writing was no good anyway.

And these weren't difficult submission rules. Double spaced. Courier. Black on white. Single-sided. 1.5" gutters. Standard, simple rules that any writer -- even an amateur -- knows.

But we got it all. Spiral bound, fancy fonts, illustrations, a different color for every page, floppy disks (well, it was the mid-90s), cover letters longer than the story itself (okay, that's exaggerating).

I can go on and I'm sure there are more with worse.

When I began, I was soft-hearted. I was soft-hearted because in my head I was "one of them". I was horrified that my boss would bounce a story without even reading it because it failed the guidelines test. I felt they deserved a chance.

Until I read the stories and realized: no. No, they really didn't. It was, as someone put it to me, a "filter". If they couldn't follow instructions, it was a pretty good chance that their story wasn't worth reading anyway.

But regardless, I wanted to help them. And there was an outlet for that, in the form of the mighty highlighter. As part of my job as manuscript processor, I would take a copy of the submission guidelines and I'd highlight the section Where They Done Fucked Up and mail it back to them. 99% of them got the point. Sometimes they even resubmitted with the problems fixed.

(This is assuming they included a SASE with their submission. Quite a few of the guideline-breakers didn't, and thus likely remain in ignorance to this day as to why their story fell into a black hole at MZBFM.)

So here I am, once again acting as a gatekeeper. This time, though, I'm reviewing resumes, and I admit -- frustration. Because people have not changed. Which includes me: the part of me that wants to give people a chance is contending with the part of me that doesn't have time to sit down and hold everyone's hand when they don't include a resume, or send a letter telling me to "call them", or do anything on the extremely short list of things that we asked them not to do on the job posting.

I'm a bit incredulous at it because...this isn't a short story submission. This is a chance at a full-time job, with benefits, writing for a living. And I just sort of assume that people will...y'know...read the guidelines. First impressions, right? Why would you blow that?

One friend put it into perspective for me when I said I was feeling like I was being too judgmental: when you're reviewing resumes, that's what you're expected to do. If you're too soft, you hire the wrong guy/gal, and then what?

So, y'know, maybe this blog post will get read where our guidelines weren't. And maybe some of the people who I've flat-out deleted from my voicemail will read this and realize why they're not going to get a phonecall from me: because our guidelines on Craigslist said don't call us. Because if we wanted calls, we'd have included a phone number. Because we are not a big company with a big HR department and it's just me and Eric going through these. Because I don't have the time to chase you down and talk to you about our job. I'd rather not do it at all, but if you do have questions, there's always email.

Maybe you're the greatest, awesomest writer in the world. But if you can't follow simple instructions, I can't in good conscience employ you.

So forgive me for being callus -- I'm just doing my job.