Open Letter to Employers Who've Rejected My Kids

“Thank you for your interest in employing my young-adult children.”

Wait. You have no interest, do you? Let me start again.

“Thank you for pretending to be interested in employing my young adults so that at least for a brief period of time, we had something to be excited about.”

Though of course, when you reply within seconds of an online application being submitted, you’re kind of cheating us of that. Could you, maybe, delay the auto-rejection for at least as long as it took to fill out those online pages and pages?

Let me try again, for the few that led us on at least a little bit.

“Thank you for having sufficient interest in my young adults to call them in for an interview before breaking their hearts with that rejection e-mail.”

Well, now, wait. So few actually bother to deliver a post-interview rejection, favoring the “If we just never contact them again, they'll figure it out eventually” strategy. Remember that time my daughter kept calling and calling and being promised a reply and nothing, nothing, nothing? Good times!

Maybe: “Thank you for giving my young adults practice in interviewing skills, patience, perseverance, and emotional management of rejection.”

Those are lessons I'm not learning so well, obviously. Sure, I give my kids all the “It's not a personal rejection, it has nothing to do with disability, you don't know who else was in the running or exactly what they were looking for. We'll just keep looking, the right place for you is out there, sweetie."

But what I want to write is:

“Thank you, you inconsiderate, small-hearted, closed-minded, short-sighted hiring person, for your contribution to the chipping away of my kids’ self-confidence and self-esteem. Does it take so much vision and imagination to see young adults with disabilities as worthy of a chance and at least as many opportunities to fall short yet stay employed that you'd give to absolutely anybody else? With just a little help up front, you'd get yourself a long-serving, loyal, enthusiastic, grateful employee. And you'd get me singing your praises on my blog instead of shaking my fist.”