Take this RAC and Shove It

Bitter? Perhaps. Disappointed? Absolutely. Yours truly did not make the cut for Metro's Riders' Advisory Council:

Greetings:

Thank you for your interest in the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority Riders' Advisory Council (RAC). We received an overwhelming number of applications, and while it was a difficult decision, our Board of Directors has selected the 21 members to serve on this inaugural Council.

We appreciate the time and effort you took to complete the application. The Riders' Advisory Council meetings will be open to the public. We welcome your participation and ideas for improving your Metro system.

Best wishes to you in your future endeavors.

Um, thank you? Though I am giving myself a firm pat on the back for applying - too often I will think about acting on a goal just long enough to watch the deadline creep past - I must admit my heart actually sank a bit (no, really, I felt something move) when I received the rejection slip e-mail.

Hell, I should just go to bed. Sleep it off....Wake up in the morning, put on some thermals, and guess when my bus is coming. This morning it didn't show up on time; 15 minutes later, two pulled up together. Yippee - a choice of how best to get to work late: old, refurbished bus or newer, "running on natural gas" bus. The bright side is that I know now I won't be fielding complaints. Oooh, I think my heart just moved back into place.

Check Out My RAC!

My guess is that Metro didn't think too much before throwing that acronym out to the public. More importantly, I'm not sure just how much strategic planning went into the creation of the Riders' Advisory Council. Of course, once I found out about the RAC - approximately 72 hours before the application deadline - I applied. While I have no doubt the initiative is flawed (Metro really wants to hear what schmucks like me have to say?), I do believe this is a baby-step in the right direction.

- - -

Then yesterday sumpnspicious happened; I received an e-mail simply entitled "Riders' Advisory Council Application":

Greetings:

Thank you for your interest in Metro's Riders' Advisory Council (RAC)! This e-mail is to confirm that we have received your RAC membership application and are in the process of reviewing it. However, in reviewing your application, it was noted that some of your information appears to be truncated/incomplete. Please take time to carefully review your application information (attached) and make any necessary changes to ensure that all of your information is captured.

NOTE: You will be given three (3) business days to re-submit the attached application with changes. If you have not replied within the allotted time, the application will go to the next stage of the screening process as is.

If you deem the application acceptable as is and no changes are necessary, you do not have to do anything. Otherwise, please REPLY to this e-mail or forward any changes to RACComments@wmata.com. If you have any questions, please feel free to contact Akua K. John at (202) 962-xxxx. Thank you in advance for your cooperation and your interest in the Riders' Advisory Council.

Akua K. John
Office of Project Communications
Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority
600 Fifth Street, NW
Washington, DC 20001

Pardon? I labored for a least an entire hour on the application - two essays filled with complete sentences, not just phrases and bullet points - and now you want to tell me that my application is somehow "truncated?" After wrestling with the attached PDF for five minutes or so ("Error: The Requested File Does Not Exist"..."Error: The Requested File Does Not Exist" etc.), I realized the problem was with whatever program Metro used to transfer the responses I entered for the online form into a PDF. Not only did it cut off essays mid-paragraph, all of the apostrophes morphed into quotations marks - I'm surprised they even wanted to give an illiterate bastard like myself a chance to make amends.

Whoever is vetting the applications must have found my half-paragraphs intriguing enough to ask for the rest, no? If not, what I fear most is a fare increase due to the manpower and bandwidth expenses incurred if every applicant's answers were amputated.