Gormless Systems Memo 2026-201: The ‘Sideways Drill Bit’ Salary Window

RE

Candidate #4471 (“Sprucewood Years”)

GORMLESS SYSTEMS — INTERNAL MEMO

Talent Intelligence Division · QA Post-Mortem

To the Hiring Committee:

This morning, our state-of-the-art AI recruiter completed a successful interview with a candidate who does not appear to exist.

The applicant claimed seven years of experience at Sprucewood, a company our systems cannot find. They described their current responsibilities as “raccoon protocols.” When asked for a desired salary range, they submitted a sideways drill bit. The bot praised the candidate’s composure, logged the drill bit under “compensation package,” and advanced them to the next round.

We reviewed the transcript. The bot was, by every metric we track, correct to do so. The candidate answered with confidence, showed no hesitation, and never left our safety parameters. Nothing in our hiring model is designed to detect whether answers are true, because nothing in our hiring model was ever given that job. It looked for polish, punctuality, and a drill bit in the salary field — and it found all three.

We recommend promoting the bot to Head of Talent and reserving human judgment for a future fiscal year. Next steps: begin outreach to candidates who describe themselves as “at least 40% raccoon.”

— The Satire Desk

From the Satire Desk at goodbye, interview. All companies and people in this memo are fictional. Satire is always labelled and never names real companies — the true stories do that on their own. Spotted an error of fact in our non-fiction? Corrections.