"Giada in the 206"; and "I hate the GMS people"

Giada's first Weekend Getaway is in Seattle. Funny.

All-Purpose Pizza finally found my place. It's about time. The pizza is good.

So this is my Friday night. I was taking a nap on my couch, when a student called, saying there was a problem with her Gates Millennium Scholarship application. My job was to go online and nominate her. Someone else would handle the recommendation.

So last night, I went online, registered with the GMS, and tried to fill out the nomination form. I tried for about 20 minutes to make it work, but, unhappily, I kept getting the recommendation form, not the nominator form. Screw it, I thought. I'll start over.

So I started from the beginning; I registered again under a different variation of my name, and this time it worked; I was able to fill out the nomination form no problem.

So when the student called me a few minutes ago, and told me there was a problem. Boo! Apparently, the nomination is fine, but that recommendation form that I kept getting by mistake? Yah, it's BLOCKING the other guy from submitting the student's recommendation.

Don't worry, I told her, I'll call the Gates people. So I called them, and explained the problem. All I needed to do was to back out of that aborted recommendation registration. Right? Or maybe they could just delete that registration, so the real recommender can get in. Piece of cake.

Sigh. I know this is a generalization, but honestly, this is what I think of East Coast people. The person at the GMS told me... it's hard to explain. All she told me was "no." No, you can't back out of a mistaken registration. No, it can't be deleted. The part that's hard to explain is that she wasn't doing anything to help me find a solution. Not suggesting options, not offering any kind of help, just telling me "no." Like I'm annoying her.

So I start getting frustrated, but I really don't want to blow it for my student. So I said, this is just a matter of backing me out of a registration... or deleting it. There's gotta be a way that the recommender can get in and submit his recommendation. "No."

At this point, I need this person to acknowledge how stupid the situation is. She won't apologize, or even empathize. Fine. There's got to be a way to get my student recommended, because she deserves it. So Ms. Concrete Wall says, the recommender can fill out the paper form and have it postmarked by midnight tonight... or you can finish the recommendation form yourself. And then finally, we get to the bottom of it, "We have no way of deleting the original registration."

First of all, yes you do. Yes you fucking do, you asshole, yes you do. You ask one person, and it's done. It's a computer and you are the fucking GATES FOUNDATION.

Second, if that's the case, then you people might as well hang a sign that says HACK OUR DUMB ASSES because all you have to know is a student's name and SSA to sabotage their application.

I have to go now, because Ms. Concrete wall just called the student to remind her that the postmark has to be 9pm Seattle time, since the deadline is midnight Eastern. Have you ever heard of such a thing? And the original recommender is at the Sonics game. What bullshit.

My student deserves this scholarship. But the GMS people deserve to be set on fire.
______

UPDATE: Both the student and I managed to hit "send" just under the wire. We were both writing as fast as we could to beat the deadline, so I'm sure the application will stand out... for the hastiness of completion. There goes the scholarship. Oh well, my consolation is that those stupid GMS people will have to read it.

So Giada, you know with the cleavage and the giant head? Giada's in Seattle, and she ate at Cascadia happy hour, Victrolla, Revolutions, Lowell's, the Dahlia Lounge, Cafe Nola... at the Dahlia Lounge, she actually moan-growled; it sounded like Grover and Yoda having an orgasm together. Over the doughnuts.