[SilasX]

Doing it so thoroughly that you purge any reminders of someone's death is a bad idea.

Even knowing this happened, I don't see how it should have been done differently. Eventually you have to do something about the vacancy. Communicating to the author about the vacancy will remind him of the death. It's unavoidable.

It's "overblown" to expect everyone not to communicate to you in any way that calls back to your roommate dying.

>Did you read the actual post?

Yes.

Edit: To put it another way, let's say this email was sent how the author would have preferred. Next semester, then what? They have to keep adding a blurb about sympathy for the roommate's death, every time the vacancy is mentioned? Eventually you have to accept that "no, the world isn't going to keep dancing around this".

[clort]

> I don't see how it should have been done differently

The automated email should have been sent to the building coordinator who could have acted on the automated request to assign a new roommate or not as appropriate. At the very least, there is a vacancy halfway through the year for a reason. How many of the possible reasons might benefit from considerate handling? Sometimes impersonal centralisation works well, and sometimes not.

[rawbeef]

So all vacancy notifications should be sent to building coordinators who are responsible for personally notifying tenants? What if they forget or do it tactlessly?

The system worked as intended. Part of emotional maturity is learning to cope with "cosmic indifference." It's not a defect to engineer out of day-to-day life. Or if it is, it falls at the bottom of my list.

IMHO this request reflects a mind-boggling level of privilege.

[hombre_fatal]

> Part of emotional maturity is learning to cope with "cosmic indifference."

Well said.

If anything, the email should be simplified: "The system will be assigning you a new roommate within the week."

Not made to sound like a human wrote it. Not branched into some insincere if(prevUserHasDeceased){comfortCurrentUser()} template.

Just a matter of fact from an indifferent computer doing its job.

Not because the world doesn't need empathy, but to keep it in a mode in which we don't expect it. Just like you don't get mad at your dog when it waits for your deceased partner to get home, nor at their cellphone's low-battery chime for not knowing it won't be needing a recharge, nor at the stoplight for not knowing you're late to the wake.

[ticviking]

> What if they forget or do it tactlessly?

Then they are incompetent at their job, and require either better tools/support or replacing with a competent professional.