<story><title>A Vacancy Has Been Detected (2019)</title><url>https://kellysutton.com/2019/06/19/a-vacancy-has-been-detected.html</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>gherig4</author><text>That email seems very human and reasonable and it did its job perfectly. It warned the student of a potential outcome and the student was able to act on that warning. The alternative of somebody moving in one day without warning would be the real fail case and that didn&amp;#x27;t happen.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>SilasX</author><text>At risk of sounding like a jerk, I agree and think this whole reaction is overblown.&lt;p&gt;A vacancy has been opened up. That will trigger numerous consequences across the system. Yes, every time you observe such consequences, you will be reminded of its cause -- the roommate&amp;#x27;s death.  But it&amp;#x27;s unrealistic to expect every other subsystem not to do anything that reminds you of that death, which, as far as I can tell, is the extent of this email&amp;#x27;s &amp;quot;wrongdoing&amp;quot;.&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;Woe is me, how dare you, the housing system, refer to my roommate&amp;#x27;s death as just another vacancy.&amp;quot; Come on, now.</text></comment>
<story><title>A Vacancy Has Been Detected (2019)</title><url>https://kellysutton.com/2019/06/19/a-vacancy-has-been-detected.html</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>gherig4</author><text>That email seems very human and reasonable and it did its job perfectly. It warned the student of a potential outcome and the student was able to act on that warning. The alternative of somebody moving in one day without warning would be the real fail case and that didn&amp;#x27;t happen.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>khawkins</author><text>I agree it was reasonable, but it was written such that it was very recognizable as a non-human automated system response.  I&amp;#x27;d make the case that the message should go even further to seem like a robot, because few empathise with mindless automatons.  For the same reason, it&amp;#x27;s not clear that serious emotional damage occurred.  It wasn&amp;#x27;t cruel or unsympathetic, it was a machine going through its motions.&lt;p&gt;I think it was a simple oversight on behalf of system administrators.</text></comment>