"Job hunting today is such bull----," Tom Boyer of St. Pete Beach wrote to me in an e-mail the other day. "Nobody listens to anybody."

A little background: Tom has made appearances here before. He showed up, too, in a story in the Times back in March.

"I have a theory that it goes into the great database in the sky, never to be seen," said Tom Boyer, 62, of St. Pete Beach, who used to day trade and has done some substitute teaching.

He later forwarded an e-mail he had gotten from TheTeam@CyberCoders.com. The e-mail from the career service site came with a message of "Welcome Aboard!" coupled with a vaguely maritime theme — some sort of rescue boat, Boyer thought, in this unsettling sea of unemployment. He was in no mood for cartoon logos and elementary school metaphors.

"The Team!" he wrote in a note to the Times. "There is no 'team,' just a bunch of interacting programs that are triggered by responses."

So here's what led to the latest frustrated e-mail. He got another e-mail from someone at CyberCoders.com. It started with "Hi Thomas P. Boyer," was for a position for "a Account Executive in Tampa, FL," and was heavy on the exclamation points. Please read on! What you need for this position! What you'll be doing! What's in it for you! That kind of thing.

Tom replied to the e-mail saying he was interested but wasn't as interested in a commissioned sales job and maybe this person could tell him if it was a commissioned sales job. Please let him know. Thank you. A human e-mail written by a human.

The response he got back?

Same as the first CyberCoders e-mail. "Hi Thomas P. ..." "A Account Executive." Exclamation points.

Tom wrote back: "Please just answer my question. Is it a commissioned sales job?"

Nothing.