PHILADELPHIA, PA – Engineering junior Steven Harper recently missed out on the opportunity of a lifetime when his Gmail account filtered out an internship acceptance message containing the word “congratulations” as spam. After Steven’s 74th refusal letter from world-renowned tech companies around the country, Google began flagging phrases in his email account such as “we are pleased to inform you,” “impressed by your background,” and “extend an offer” as obvious unsolicited spam.
“The algorithm recognizes fraudulent messages and disposes them in a folder outside the inbox,” explains Google CEO Sundar Pichai. “With Steven’s history of internship rejections – along with his low GPA and lack of prior work experience – the algorithm determined that this email containing the word ‘congratulations’ was obviously fake.”
Google uses the same algorithm to filter out requests for cash from Nigerian princes, advertisements for penile enlargement pills, and announcements about free iPads.
Steven appears to be taking the news well, given the circumstances: “Yeah, I’m upset, but there will be other chances. You really can’t beat yourself up about it; you just have to keep moving on. I just wish I knew sooner. All this time, I could have had a free iPad!”
If you are concerned that you may have missed an email about an internship acceptance in your Gmail, simply navigate to the top of your homepage and type “in: unhireable” in the search bar.