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To the OP, I say: ouch, really sorry that something like this happened.
However, based on the previous posts in the thread, I'm really scared about how much several of you trust the computers. As a former sysadmin, I can see a very plausible (and common) case where this situation could happen:
1.) PNMs put in preferences on the system.
2.) System does its magic at night, crunching the lists, ranking, etc. This is an intensive optimization problem...
<meanwhile> ... sysadmin receives a page ... [error on system xyz, I/O error, system crashed]
3.) Just as luck would have it, the system is not written robustly enough, so the PNM has just been deleted off the "unprocessed" list but not fully added to a bid list.
4.) System comes back up, attempts to resume computation, finds anomaly, and "auto-fixes" it based on what it knows: all completed transactions are processed, all incomplete ones are deleted. The girl is no longer on any lists because of the consequences in (3) and thus gets purged from the system during the consistency check.
5.) System resumes and leaves girls SOL.
Yes, the system could have been written to prevent this, but this usually requires lots of care and foreward thinking. Usually, programmers don't really take that much care unless it's something as critical as banking transactions, etc. As a geek, I can say that many of my GDI colleagues have this viewpoint: so what if something like this happens, girl can just go thru recruitment again next year. After all, such a mistake has even happenend before on the systems powering the NYSE, inducing a stock market crash.
Anyways, I hope this gets resolved soon.
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