The Kinder, Gentler Email Nazi
I've done a lot of things in my life. I can't say I would do anything differently, given the mystical chance at a do-over, even though I have fucked up plenty. I certainly wouldn't say that I am proud of everything I have done (and honestly, who would?) but the things I have done were a result of who I was, acting on the information I had at the time. It was all honest, right or not. I would not recommend my life experiences for everyone, nor wish a lot of them on anyone. The bottom line is that all of my experiences have made me who I am, and I'm a Pretty Good Guy. And as Radney Foster says, half of the good things in my life came from half of my mistakes.
One thing I did was a three year stint at technical support. If you are thinking that my wording evokes images of a prison sentence, you would be correct. I've never been to prison, but I've been to jail a few times. The difference is, in jail you know you fucked up and you have no one to blame but yourself. Come to think of it, that kind of reminds me of how technical support duty went for me... so forget any difference. I think prison may pay better, though.
While in Tech hell, I developed a severe intolerance to stupid emails. Stupid people, hell, I had that intolerance already. Especially since I had just closed a ten year old retail business. The general public can and often does suck out loud. Now here I was, sitting at a desk answering often stupid questions from the aforementioned general public. And I could not fire them. I had fired plenty of customers before when I was the boss, even ran a couple off in anger. Now, almost suddenly, I had to play nice. No matter how rude or unreasonable or stupid they might be.
It went against every fiber of my being. It went against everything I believe. Coddling stupidity and ineptness is the same as encouraging stupidity and ineptness. Same with rudeness. You think I wanted to put up with that shit? I have a saying: "The customer is always the customer. They are not always right." To allow and thus to de facto encourage bad behavior from the general public is the bane of a polite society. People start expecting that if they are enough of an asshole, they will get the outcome they want. I have always been a stalwart against that trend.
But, for three long, depressing years, I did my best to hold back. Oh, most of the people were nice and we had a great relationship. I did a lot of teaching in those days and the customers were grateful. They no longer needed the help line the next time because I made them more knowledgeable. But that 20% or so of the complete idiots and some of the people that I swear were mentally incompetent, not to mention the complete dickheads... well, let's just say that the day I was laid off from that job was a relief.
I once spent a full ten minutes (I watched the clock a lot back then) trying to get a woman to right click on her mouse. It was then that I fully experienced the Theory of Relativity as it pertains to time. That was the longest ten minutes of my life. I swear, it took longer than it did to have an abcessed molar pulled and the infection scraped off my jawbone. Come to think of it, the ten years I spent self-employed flew by compared to the three years in tech support hell.
So Gloom, Despair, and Agony on me. Deep Dark Depression, Excessive Misery. That was those three years. I spent twelve or fourteen hours per day on the web or email, and as I stated, I have a very low tolerance for stupidity. I became the Email Nazi.
You know how annoying it is to get that FW:FW:FW:FW:FW:FW:FW:FW: thing, usually a hoax or urban legend, with twenty recipients in the address line? The one you have seen twice already? Try being in my situation at the time, where you get every fucking hoax email in the world forwarded to you twenty times a day. You and all of those people you don't know. Now you have their addresses, they have yours, and you have no idea where the hell your address has been forwarded yet again by the mindless general public. Pissed me off. I. Don't. Need. This. Shit.
So, since I had to play nice and grit my teeth back then, I tended to take it out on people in my personal life that acted so stupidly. I ripped them new assholes. The downside is that those people are scared shitless to email me anything. Come to think of it, that is the upside as well. I don't get that personal spam anymore.
Still, I have mellowed. I don't drop the hammer like I used to. Case in point, I got an email from a person named Elizabeth Vakili [evakili@chot.org] today, with the subject line being "Can U".
Talk about waving a red flag in front of a bull. Send me something by accident. O.K. Don't know how to BCC your list? Big problem. Use teenager text message language in the subject line? Christ. But I'm a nice guy. Here was her request:
"Get Stephanie Colston RN a password etc. for the computer so she can enter her timesheets. Also she is doing a lot of admits & she needs to be able to enter meds & do the PPOC. -thanx"
Uhhh, Liz, I am a carpenter. I have no clue as to who the hell you are, although I may have the opportunity to run you over with my pickup truck as you atttempt to cross the street. I hope you are better at your job than you are at using a vital tool of your job, the computer.
No, I didn't send that to her. I thought about it, though. Here is what I actually sent back:
"Sorry, I have no idea who you are and no ability to grant or deny access to the "computer" you reference. Could you please remove my email address from your list? Thanks in advance. David Burrow"
As I said in the title, kinder and gentler. I wonder if nurses that are not smart enough to use a computer properly are cognizant of the extreme sarcasm contained in my reply?
Coming soon, I will highlight the results of work done by Illegal Aliens. You know, they are doing "jobs Americans won't do". I'll say they are. The Americans I work with would be ashamed to do work that shitty...
One thing I did was a three year stint at technical support. If you are thinking that my wording evokes images of a prison sentence, you would be correct. I've never been to prison, but I've been to jail a few times. The difference is, in jail you know you fucked up and you have no one to blame but yourself. Come to think of it, that kind of reminds me of how technical support duty went for me... so forget any difference. I think prison may pay better, though.
While in Tech hell, I developed a severe intolerance to stupid emails. Stupid people, hell, I had that intolerance already. Especially since I had just closed a ten year old retail business. The general public can and often does suck out loud. Now here I was, sitting at a desk answering often stupid questions from the aforementioned general public. And I could not fire them. I had fired plenty of customers before when I was the boss, even ran a couple off in anger. Now, almost suddenly, I had to play nice. No matter how rude or unreasonable or stupid they might be.
It went against every fiber of my being. It went against everything I believe. Coddling stupidity and ineptness is the same as encouraging stupidity and ineptness. Same with rudeness. You think I wanted to put up with that shit? I have a saying: "The customer is always the customer. They are not always right." To allow and thus to de facto encourage bad behavior from the general public is the bane of a polite society. People start expecting that if they are enough of an asshole, they will get the outcome they want. I have always been a stalwart against that trend.
But, for three long, depressing years, I did my best to hold back. Oh, most of the people were nice and we had a great relationship. I did a lot of teaching in those days and the customers were grateful. They no longer needed the help line the next time because I made them more knowledgeable. But that 20% or so of the complete idiots and some of the people that I swear were mentally incompetent, not to mention the complete dickheads... well, let's just say that the day I was laid off from that job was a relief.
I once spent a full ten minutes (I watched the clock a lot back then) trying to get a woman to right click on her mouse. It was then that I fully experienced the Theory of Relativity as it pertains to time. That was the longest ten minutes of my life. I swear, it took longer than it did to have an abcessed molar pulled and the infection scraped off my jawbone. Come to think of it, the ten years I spent self-employed flew by compared to the three years in tech support hell.
So Gloom, Despair, and Agony on me. Deep Dark Depression, Excessive Misery. That was those three years. I spent twelve or fourteen hours per day on the web or email, and as I stated, I have a very low tolerance for stupidity. I became the Email Nazi.
You know how annoying it is to get that FW:FW:FW:FW:FW:FW:FW:FW: thing, usually a hoax or urban legend, with twenty recipients in the address line? The one you have seen twice already? Try being in my situation at the time, where you get every fucking hoax email in the world forwarded to you twenty times a day. You and all of those people you don't know. Now you have their addresses, they have yours, and you have no idea where the hell your address has been forwarded yet again by the mindless general public. Pissed me off. I. Don't. Need. This. Shit.
So, since I had to play nice and grit my teeth back then, I tended to take it out on people in my personal life that acted so stupidly. I ripped them new assholes. The downside is that those people are scared shitless to email me anything. Come to think of it, that is the upside as well. I don't get that personal spam anymore.
Still, I have mellowed. I don't drop the hammer like I used to. Case in point, I got an email from a person named Elizabeth Vakili [evakili@chot.org] today, with the subject line being "Can U".
Talk about waving a red flag in front of a bull. Send me something by accident. O.K. Don't know how to BCC your list? Big problem. Use teenager text message language in the subject line? Christ. But I'm a nice guy. Here was her request:
"Get Stephanie Colston RN a password etc. for the computer so she can enter her timesheets. Also she is doing a lot of admits & she needs to be able to enter meds & do the PPOC. -thanx"
Uhhh, Liz, I am a carpenter. I have no clue as to who the hell you are, although I may have the opportunity to run you over with my pickup truck as you atttempt to cross the street. I hope you are better at your job than you are at using a vital tool of your job, the computer.
No, I didn't send that to her. I thought about it, though. Here is what I actually sent back:
"Sorry, I have no idea who you are and no ability to grant or deny access to the "computer" you reference. Could you please remove my email address from your list? Thanks in advance. David Burrow"
As I said in the title, kinder and gentler. I wonder if nurses that are not smart enough to use a computer properly are cognizant of the extreme sarcasm contained in my reply?
Coming soon, I will highlight the results of work done by Illegal Aliens. You know, they are doing "jobs Americans won't do". I'll say they are. The Americans I work with would be ashamed to do work that shitty...
posted by David Burrow at 8:28 PM
4 Comments:
Well David, do you remember I told you about the UAL Award I'd give to my "customers" when spending time as Network Administrator at a city government office. Having spent an already nine long years as governemnt contractor adn getting to know the system of just how screwed up our governemnt is, the one thing I gladly took from the experience was the use of acronyms. The UAL Award stood for Users Are Losers and I gave them out to the "customers that ticked me off the most because they could never learn how to use the hardware and software provided them.
I cannot claim complete ownership of my favorite acronym developed during my time as a government contractor as it was thought up by the team I worked with. That one being LIES. If its Logical, Intelligent, Efficient, and Supportable, the government doesn't want to hear any LIES. I like you, moved onto a much different career after dealing with the yahoos during that time. It is unfortunate but I have somewhat become a yahoo in terms of computer knowledge.
Welcome Back David and I look forward to your next post.
sportzznut
Sorry for the misspells and occasional grammatical errors. Bad typist and editor.
sportzznut
Yay! Your blog is back!
I had a comment all ready to post, but my browser hung. One of these days, I'll learn to do my posts on the clipboard and use cut & paste.
As for stupid people, don't even get me started.
You want the truth? My sister is a nurse, and she can't manage to use a computer for shit. After the FIFTH time I had been called about a virus her husband (who has a CIS degree, no less) downloaded while playing with a P2P program, I asked the stupidest question I could imagine.
"Do you have an antivirus program and firewall?"
After two hours of phone conversation, and a call to her husband, it turns out that the nice new machine they bought did not, in fact, have either, because he was just so confident that he knew computers well enough that he didn't need them.
In all fairness, my sister's job and training is to know medical information, so I was a little less irritated with her than I was with the retard with the barely passing grades that got him his tissue paper degree. I just about lost my mind to this episode. Thankfully, since encouraging my sister to get these programs on her computer, I have not gotten another call from them.
Although I can't imagine what would drive someone to contact a person outside of their organization to set up a password for someone inside said organization. That one was a special kind of retarded, sir.
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