Bloke calls

[j4]

This was sent to webmaster:

I enclose an email from the telecoms people. It
is virtually illiterate: is it real?? And why
cant you sort out these sutomated calls that are
so irritating?...please! AD.

Date: Mon, 8 Jun 2009 09:23:23 +0100

Good Morning

You're Administrator will have to officially
request the number change.
I'm afraid there are far too many company's doing
cold calling we can not
bloke them all and they regularly change the
outgoing number. We only bloke
calls in serious cases such a threatening and
abusive calls.

Best Regard
Telecoms

I did laugh at "bloke calls", but note that 'AD' (who also can't type, doesn't understand punctuation, and for some reason thinks webmaster is the person to contact about getting a phone fixed) is a professor.

Comments

[jackiesjottings.livejournal.com]

Hmm- I wonder if bloke would like to do some helpdesk sessions ;)

[j4.livejournal.com]

He's probably too busy with all those anonymous calls... :)

[k425.livejournal.com]

I sometimes wonder whether my prof is dyslexic looking at the emails she rattles off. However, I think it's more a case of when she's rattling off an email her fingers work faster than her brain (and she can't touch-type) so I see random letter swapping, random capitalisation, punctuation gaps. If the email needs to be more formal it'll be re-read, but not a "iLndsy can yuo pirnt this Thanks".

[nja.livejournal.com]

I think a lot of people are used to auto-correction these days, too. I am only just getting round to the idea that I can type "cant" in some contexts and rather than leaving it George Bernard Shaw style, it will be silently corrected. Other people are surprised when that doesn't happen.

[j4.livejournal.com]

I confess I like the iPhone's autocorrection (most of the time it's very good), but I can't trust it completely, not least because it corrects every goddamned instance of "its" to "it's". Grr.

[nja.livejournal.com]

It also corrects "reading" to "Reading" (I'm assuming it's the same software as the iPod Touch, which I love - I have hardly ever played music on it but it's a great portable internet/games/PDA device).

[qatsi.livejournal.com]

a lot of people are used to auto-correction these days

Don't academics still use pine or something? (elm for the adventurous, I suppose)

[j4.livejournal.com]

her fingers work faster than her brain

"He's very bright, he just gets bored easily". :-}

I think it's just rude, to be honest. It's a way of saying "Look at me, I'm so busy and important that I don't have time to check my typing (or learn to use a spellchecker)". If someone wants me to do something for them but can't be bothered to take the extra minute necessary to re-read what they've written and make it make sense, why should I take the extra time to decode their message and do what they're asking?

[nja.livejournal.com]

I have an occasionally outrageously obnoxious colleague who once ticked me off for not writing emails of the form "Dear X, blah blah blah, kindest regards from your most obedient servant Andrew", rather than my usual style of assuming that the recipient knows who they are and who I am and just writing "blah blah blah" with an automatic three-line sig at the bottom. A generational thing I think - I've always considered email to be an informal way of sending messages to people you already know (because when I started using it, your mates in the lab were about the only people you ever sent email to), he's a bit younger (and considerably more conservative than me) and thinks of it more like writing a letter.

I also have a senior colleague WHO --- writes email LIKE THIS. I think he's dyslexic but I don't THINK that explains the RANDOM --- CAPITALISED words --- and DASHES. He has improved slightly, perhaps because people tend to look at him in meetings when discussing the awful way students compose email.

[j4.livejournal.com]

I definitely vary my email style depending on the recipient...

* With email to people I don't know I will usually at least sign on / sign off ("Dear X or "Hi X" at the beginning, some kind of "Yours/Thanks/Regards" at the end).

* Email to colleagues tends to be much less formally structured (but may still be formal in tone if they're senior to me -- just doesn't need all the "Dear X" apparatus).

* Email to friends reads like far-too-accurately transcribed speech... :-}

I rather like your senior colleague's style. Looks like something from an 18th century novel. :)

[nja.livejournal.com]

To WAPPING to meet my Esteemed Friend Sir M----- W------ whereupon we visited the THEATRE and thence to a TAVERN in the company of a Pair of SAUCY WHORES. I did then REFER the STUDENTS to the Faculty Board ---- for MISCONDUCT.

I am second marking the first year numerical analysis scripts this afternoon. Actually I am not at this precise moment, but I should be.

[bellinghman.livejournal.com]

Exactly.

I find that really, really irritating on public fora: the 10 seconds the writer couldn't be bothered to invest in ensuring clarity is vastly outweighed by the 1 second each of the hundred people who read it.

[monkeyhands.livejournal.com]

I think it's just rude, to be honest. It's a way of saying "Look at me, I'm so busy and important that I don't have time to check my typing (or learn to use a spellchecker)". If someone wants me to do something for them but can't be bothered to take the extra minute necessary to re-read what they've written and make it make sense, why should I take the extra time to decode their message and do what they're asking?

Hear, hear.

[bellinghman.livejournal.com]

But, but, but telecoms emailed AD. Of course the webmaster is the right person to contact.

[j4.livejournal.com]

I think that's the problem, yeah -- email = webmail = webmaster.

Also, "somebody told me to look it up on the website and I got there and didn't understand how to find things so I just closed my eyes and clicked until the internet gave me an email to send" = webmaster. :-/

[scat0324.livejournal.com]

Oddly, it's not AD's usual style (I'm on the case now) - said professor is usually very polite, careful and thankful for the help we can offer. I can only imagine that these phone calls have really annoyed and stretched AD to breaking point.

[arnhem.livejournal.com]

Possibly it's the middle of exam-marking time?

[j4.livejournal.com]

Time to unplug the phone while marking then...?

[j4.livejournal.com]

My first thought was "Dear 'AD', we have just received this rude and hastily-typed email purporting to be from you; is it real??" -- so maybe it wasn't really from AD at all. Maybe all these emails are being spoofed by sock-puppets (no relation, I know! ;-)

Telecoms are usually very helpful too (& TBH I don't think their email was unhelpful/inaccurate/impolite -- just v bad spelling).

[fanf]

Here the webmaster team get a load of email that's less than relevant because their email address appears at the bottom of many pages, since they're more or less responsible for the content or at least for publishing it.

[j4.livejournal.com]

Indeed, we had a lot of that at MIS. 8-)

We don't do that so much here, though (there isn't always an obvious contact email on a page, this is a known problem, having a link to wm would probably be better [though we'd get more garbage] and having a link to helldesk would be even better) & it's not clear which web page the user would have come from anyway.

hello future

[cleanskies.livejournal.com]

I think all the tone poets ended up working support desks

[uitlander]

Is that a 'real' Professor or a Professor for the purposes of hotel and flight upgrades by entitlement?