A Search and Rescue Prodigy...

So I receive this call from a female resident on the Left Coast. She states that she is looking for information on employment opportunities within the our agency, in that area of the country. I ask her how she found out about our service and she begins rattling off how she has been actively involved in search and rescue for a number of years now so she's "always known about us". "And... how... did... you... find... our... number... today...?", I finally ask. "Oh... I found that on the internet", she finally clues in. (Listening/interpretive skills = 0).

I inform her that we do have a point of contact for this information and that it is in the form of an email address.


I then proceed to give her said email address and we terminate the call.

Not two minutes later, I get another call. Again, it’s a female caller from the same area of Canada. She is looking for job opportunities in SAR with the same agency. The lady sounds familiar . So again I retrieve the program from our database and offer the email address. At this point my caller advises me that: “Yes, I used that address and it led me right back to you…”. I ask her how this is possible, as I provided her with an email address and not a website URL. Again she states: “That’s the one I used and it directed me to you. I put it in Google and it led me back to you…!!!”. (Cognitive skills = 0).

After shaking my head to rid it of the dissonance created by my caller’s last comment, I slowed my speech to match the speed of her brain and painstakingly explained what email was all about and how to use it. I almost went on to say that no, you don’t need stamps for email either, but that probably would have been seen as cruel. Having assured myself that she sort of understood what I had just told her, I once more ended the call. If she does not have the presence of mind to sort out something as basic as the differtence between an email address and a URL site, when there is no pressure on or sense of urgency, I do not give her a snowball's chance in Hell working in the world of SAR.


If in fact there is a God of any sort out there, she will never darken the administrative doorway of any recruiting centre.