I was asked to prepare a story for a summer edition of Cosmopolitan Australia magazine two weeks ago by Lauren Smelcher. I was given a deadline to prepare the story by, and guidelines for length of the story.
On the day of the deadline, I had finalised the story, and edited as required to meet the guidelines provided to me earlier. I had specially prepared the story in two formats, a Microsoft Word document, and a simple text file. I attached both of these files to my submission email to be sent to Lauren, and at the same time I thought I would send the story to a good friend of mine, Screaming Violet.
I had expected the deadline to be close of business on the date of the deadline, and sent the email at approximately 10am on the deadline date. So it should have been received with plenty of time to spare.
I checked with Violet whether she had received the story, and she told me that she had received it, read it, and complimented us for the quality of the story. So the email was definitely sent, and able to be received.
I thought nothing of it until Violet told me she had received some recommended edits to her story before being included in the publication. I was expecting to receive a reply of some sort, but thought nothing of it when I didn’t receive it. I thought I would email Lauren to see if she didn’t receive it, and her reply email simply said “NOPE”. So I forwarded it again within 2 minutes of receiving her email, so I knew she was likely to have been in the office, and I didn’t receive a reply again.
Yesterday, I decided to follow up, and ask Lauren during business hours if she received my story, she told me that she hadn’t and that it was in fact too late to be included because the deadline had passed. Knowing that I had sent the email on time, with plenty of time to spare, I grew frustrated with their email system.
I sent out two tweets to the main Cosmopolitan Twitter account, and within a few minutes I received an email from Lauren saying that it was unfair for my tweets to have been published. This further frustrated me, and after talking with Violet again, I decided to prepare an email reply to Lauren’s email. I chose not to send it, and have in fact prepared it as an Open Letter to Cosmopolitan Australia. I will also send it direct to Lauren as well.
If you read the letter you will probably better understand my frustration, and what exactly is going through my head at the moment in regards to this.
If writing this open letter means that the editors at Cosmopolitan Australia never consider me again to write for any of their publications, then I am fine with that. If they can’t have a working email system open to receiving emails from me again, then that is really their loss, and not mine.
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