INTERNAL MEMO: Emoji Reaction Policy Update

TO

All Hiring Managers, Gormless Systems FROM: People & Culture, Gormless Systems SUBJECT: WhatsApp Reaction Emoji Protocol — Urgent Revision. Following a recent candidate interaction that attracted what the Board describes as "unwanted internet attention," we are clarifying our emoji reaction policy for candidate communications conducted via personal messaging apps. Effective immediately: 1. The thumbs-up emoji remains the approved reaction for a candidate declining an interview. It is professional, neutral, and does not generate news articles. 2. Changing a thumbs-up reaction to a middle-finger emoji the following day is no longer permitted, regardless of how personally you took the rejection. 3. If a candidate's polite decline makes you feel "a way about it," the approved escalation path is: close the chat, take a walk, and remember that they were never your employee. 4. WhatsApp is not a recruitment CRM. If your entire hiring pipeline lives in a chat thread with no calendar invites, no email trail, and no structured scheduling, the emoji is not the problem. The candidate in question has since posted the exchange to Reddit, where it has been described as "the most efficient culture-fit assessment ever conducted." We are inclined to agree. A mandatory Emoji Professionalism Workshop has been scheduled. Attendance will be tracked. Reactions to the calendar invite are discouraged.

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.