DALLAS, TX–Dante Abramo takes pride in his job as the hiring manager for a digital marketing agency. As the first line of defense into his company’s workplace, he is obligated to analyze each application thoroughly, leaving no stone un-turned. Dante has been at the job for over ten years, never receiving a complaint, promotion, or pay raise. He’s the model employee, so he knows what to look for in a candidate. And best of all? Nothing gets by Dante anymore.

While rooting through applications to fill the vacant account manager role, something caught Dante’s attention. One applicant, Abigail Halloran, stood out among the rest. Dante couldn’t put his finger on it immediately, but something was fishy about Abigail. Something was too good to be true.

“I wasn’t buying Abigail’s whole shtick. I’m not saying she was lying, I believe she had a 3.8 GPA, and I trust that she really did study abroad in Spain and speaks fluent Spanish. The thing about her mom dying from cancer seemed a little performative, but I granted her benefit of the doubt on that,” Dante recounted of the application. The conundrum had him stumped, so he cleared his schedule for the remainder of the day to get to the bottom of this tricky applicant.

Following many subsequent read-throughs of Abigail’s cover letter, Dante finally identified what was bothering him. “It says right there in the second paragraph that she has a ‘passion for Excel.’ Nothing about Abigail’s Excel track record screams passion. I’m getting like Microsoft Excel vibes, but not love Microsoft Excel vibes. The passion for spreadsheets just isn’t there. If Abigail were truly passionate about Excel, she’d be screaming it from the mountain tops, and she wouldn’t be able to shut up about it. And yet, there’s only one brief mention of it in her entire cover letter.”

Considering the account manager role is Excel-intensive, Dante had no choice but to toss out Abigail’s application entirely. “We need someone more passionate about Excel. If the fire isn’t there, she’ll burn out quickly. I’m saving Abigail from herself.”