I love this story about a Maryland father who received a robocall at 4:45 am about school closings and got his revenge by having all the members of the school board robocalled at 4:45 am. I especially love that the school board members’ response was to stop sending out the calls at that unbieberly hour of the morning.
We all deal with a lot of things that are designed in remarkably inconsiderate ways. I used to complain about these things constantly. But now there is one such thing that is so much worse than all the others that it is the only thing I complain about: submission systems for letters of recommendation. Complicated logins, making us fill out our title and address, even though that has already been supplied by the applicant, is on the letter itself and is of absolutely no use anyway (they’re going to send me a hard copy letter?), endless bullshit questions that are all answered in the letter, nonstandard forms that vary from one school to the next. Would this change if these jackasses had to fill out 50 of these a year themselves?
zmulls
Good lord, is that man a child? Or a manchild?
Most school boards have either an opt-in or opt-out for those robo-calls. Our school district is opt-in — you have to sign up for it. They have the closing info on the school website.
Our robocalls come at 5:15am. I get up a half an hour after that anyway, and my son gets up at 6:00am. So while it’s no fun to get called at that hour, it’s timely and lets us know whether there’s a closing or two-hour delay.
But if we dont’ want to get called, we can get off the list. My only complaint was that my wife had put both my cell phone and our home phone on the list, and they rang simultaneously.
stuckinred
I ran municipal sports programs for many years and you have never dealt with whiners until you do that. My first boss taught me a similar approach when I got a call at midnight about a problem in a softball game. He had me return to the call at 3am and say, “I knew this was important to you and I wanted to get back with the answer as soon as possible. . .”
DougJarvus Green-Ellis
@zmulls:
This kid’s classes were at 8:15. Isn’t 4:45 a wee bit early for that?
EDIT: And there was no opt out.
Davis X. Machina
@zmulls: I’m on the road most mornings before the district finally pulls the trigger. Most of the time the robocall is on the voicemail when I get home. Still a few radio stations that read the whole list.
On rec letters — sounds like the Common Application process. It’s a bad trade-off between security and ease-of-use, that’s for sure.
I’ve gotten used to it, and haven’t done a dead-tree rec letter in a while. While I don’t mind being able to tweak the letter — a strong candidate at St. X’s may be an accident waiting to happen at University of Y — doing that farkakhte grid thing should be one-and-done.
MikeJ
Fuck it, let ’em listen to the wireless.
DougJarvus Green-Ellis
@Davis X. Machina:
Seriously, though what gives with making us fill all that shit out when it’s on the fucking letter?
Walker
The worst thing about them is that they are nonstandard. Sometimes they just want you to upload the letter. Sometimes they want a letter plus some 0-5 rankings. And sometimes they want you to cut and paste your beautiful letter so that it answers short-answer questions of no more than 1000 characters.
DougJarvus Green-Ellis
@Walker:
I don’t mind the ranking. I can see how they might find that useful. But address and title? Why?
bk
I’m planning my escaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaape. (And I’m in awe of her fashion makeover, btw. How did someone that originally mugly become such a Vogue superstar?).
DougJarvus Green-Ellis
I like her.
Davis X. Machina
@DougJarvus Green-Ellis: My suspicion is some large-volume operations (Ivies? Enormous State Universities?) are making their A-piles and B-piles based on a 10-second inspection of those grids — ‘No one with anything checked on the left half in the A-pile!’, or some such. Probably being done by work-studies, before the actual grown-ups weigh in and do any actual reading.
I hates ’em. For starters, the longer you’ve taught, the tougher it is to rate ‘One of the very best I have encountered in my career’ — in this case, that’s 30 years, and you’re pretty damn special if I check it.
jeff
mistermix
@DougJarvus Green-Ellis: Because some paperpusher in HR or the dept office used to be in charge of logging in the letter and forwarding it to the powers that be, and they wrote down that data in a log book. So when they automated the process, they slavishly copied it instead of re-engineering it.
Happens all the fucking time, makes everyone’ life worse, but I’ll bet in half the cases someone told the powers that be that the step was unnecessary and they insisted on it, because “we’ve always done it that way”.
JWL
My uncle in Northern California once received a call at 5AM from a salesman in Florida selling septic tank additives. Of course, it was 8 AM back there. My uncle called him a stupid SOB, and the guy was insulted and started calling my uncle dirty names! When he told me that story, I laughed so hard I cried.
Zifnab
I appreciate that the school board members took it all in stride. No one tried to expel a student or have the father sued or arrested. And – as a special bonus – one of them actually fixed the problem.
Might have been nice if the dad had just emailed or called his school board members directly and informed them of the early morning call. But the fact that a group of administrators just shrugged off the kinda assholish nature of the retort and did their jobs is really good to see.
Walker
I have no idea about address. If you follow-up with someone it will be through e-mail.
I have always assumed that title is because they want to know what “level” of person this is a recommendation from. Is it a lecturer? Or a professor? Or a research scientist? They use that to weight the recommendation of the letter writer in certain areas.
I definitely know that a lecturer talking about someone’s research ability is going to be counted less than from a professor. On the other hand, a lecturer’s opinion on someone’s teaching potential might be rated higher.
I am not saying it is right. It is just that this is what I always assumed.
DougJarvus Green-Ellis
@mistermix:
So for academic jobs in math, they’ve switched to a very easy to use system for recommenders. Now that I’m on hiring end, I realize the real quantum change with it is how much easier it is for the hiring committee.
So I figure that however bad these old systems are for recommenders, they are even worse for the admissions people.
cmorenc
An everyday common annoyance is e.g. if you are phoning customer service for just about ANY business organization you have a relationship with, the first response you’ll get after the line picks up is an automated voice instruction to “enter your phone number, starting with the area code, followed by the pound# sign”, and often you’ll also be asked to state whose name the account’s in you’re calling about. So once you finally get through to a live customer service rep, what’s the first thing they ALWAYS ask for? YOUR PHONE NUMBER, STARTING WITH THE AREA CODE, and in whose name is the account your calling about.
cat48
@Doug,etc.
So, did you see the excellent NYorker article on Darrell Issa?? Quite a “hit piece” Mr. Lizza did on him. Issa may be an Arsonist as well as a Car Thief! Very good! He may be as “corrupt” as he accuses the prez of being.
RSA
There are two questions I hate; I don’t remember which schools have asked them. One asks me to rank the applicant with respect to the students in the program he’s applying to, or something along those lines. WTF? How should I know? I can judge from the graduates of that program whom I know, in some cases, but it’s a pretty biased sample. The second question asks me to rank the applicant among the students I’ve known over the past n years, asking me to distinguish between being in the top 5% and the top 1%. I wish I could do that, but to be honest numbers like that never seem worth figuring out.
DougJarvus Green-Ellis
@cmorenc:
I agree that is stupid, but it only takes a few extra seconds. If I’d filled out the full forms for this batch of recs, it would have taken me about two extra hours.
HyperIon
God, these comments are ugly and bordering on unreadable.
I assume others have mentioned this before.
White space is your friend!
DougJarvus Green-Ellis
@HyperIon:
Try quitting your browser and then restarting and coming back in. I was having the same problem and now it looks better after I did that.
dr. bloor
@DougJarvus Green-Ellis:
If your shift starts at 6:30-7 and you have to arrange for child care, 5:00 am is fine.
HyperIon
@DougJarvus Green-Ellis:
Been there, done that.
No change.
I’m on FireFox 3.6.13.
Edt: what i see is a numbered list of comments with no space between them.
burnspbesq
Way OT, but good news nonetheless.
Social Distortion have a new record coming out tomorrow.
If you had asked me in 2001 whether I thought Mike Ness would even be alive in 2011–much less making records–I would have said “NFW.”
burnspbesq
And while we’re on the subject of Social D, can I get a rousing chorus of “Prison Bound” for former OC Sheriff Michael Carona? The Ninth Circuit rejected all of his appeals. Woo-hoo!
Dre
You only do 50 letters a year? Wow, can I join your faculty? Of course, most of mine are for grad students on the “market,” but there have been way more than 50 if I add them to the undergrads who want to go to law school/grad school/be an intern.
Omnes Omnibus
Mike looks like he has lived a hard life. I am looking forward to Machine Gun Blues.
Roger Moore
@cmorenc:
I’ve always assumed this was a way of making your time on hold slightly less boring rather than a serious attempt at information gathering. OTOH, I’ve encountered a few well run places where they actually do take advantage of that information or even- gasp- don’t bother asking for your phone number because they’re looking at caller ID. I suspect those well run places have shorter average time per call because their employees are spending their time asking the customers relevant questions rather than wasting it on things a computer can look up automatically.
DougJarvus Green-Ellis
@Dre:
In math, for academic jobs, it’s a one shot deal. One upload to mathjobs.org and you are done. Otherwise, I’d do about 300 (I do about three of those a year and each person applies maybe 100 places).
BGinCHI
Doug is right about rec forms to places. No system-wide consistency. Why can’t someone just make a good system and then get lots of schools to opt in?
The law school app process is much easier. There’s a system and it’s easy.
burnspbesq
@Omnes Omnibus:
If you order it on either CD or vinyl from the Epitaph Records website, you will get a download code that works today.
Bill Murray
@dr. bloor: and if you don’t have to be in until 10 and you pretty much never get up before 8, you think a family member has died.
I am generally only requested to do grad school applications or governmental/defense position applications, but all the recommendations I have done over the last couple of years have had my information filled in when I login to the system, or were dead tree forms.
BGinCHI
@Bill Murray: It’s a different system for famous actors.
At least that’s what Angelina told me.
Pillow talk.
Omnes Omnibus
@burnspbesq: Cool, thanks for the info.
dr. bloor
@Bill Murray:
Up at eight with a school-age kid? I want to live in your school district. We get to sleep in until 6:15-6:30, and I know some kids who are waiting for the bus at that hour.
cmorenc
@Roger Moore:
Regardless of whether this is a deliberate tactic or not, it gives most customers a poor first impression of the outfit’s competence and responsiveness. A vivid demonstration of a disconnect between an outfit’s customer service reps and their outfit’s information/communication technology is NOT the first thing any outfit should strive ever do, let alone consistently do, the first moment a live representative speaks to a customer. If this is indeed a deliberate tactic, it’s a colossally stupid one.
YES, it’s a relatively minor, brief inconvenience. That does not at all dissipate the very poor initial impression it makes. A personable, solidly competent customer rep who is able to tangibly help the customer with their problem can amply overcome this initial bump, but if instead the customer rep proves less personable, competent, or able to help, can help amplify the customer’s initial impression into outright annoyance with the company.
arguingwithsignposts
Late, but a pet peeve of mine is the front restroom in an airplane is reserved for first class passengers. There are nine people who get their own potty while the rest of the plane, 90 of us, have to walk to the back.
Jill
Phone #2
David Brooks (not that one)
I have an additional London number attached to my VOIP service, so that the family in England can call us at local rates (Vonage, love your feature). After we gave the number to some rat-arsed realtors, they must have sold it to some call list, because we started getting calls at 10am London time (2am here on the left coast). Many were robo-calls offering to fix our non-existent UK credit record, so we couldn’t even yell at them. Well, I did press enough buttons to talk to an agent, but he hung up on me when I started to
comexplain.We eventually made the calls go away by adding the number to the UK DNC registry (which is only partly effective) and blocking calls that don’t supply Caller ID. That also blocks genuine callers who like to suppress their own Caller ID, but that did stop calls from our next-door-neighbor, so it’s all good.
Also too, the London number had presumably previously been assigned to a Pakistani immigrant, as we also got early morning calls from Pakistan for a while (hello, DHS). They gave up eventually.
Dre
@DougJarvus Green-Ellis: Ah, not wrong school, wrong field. And it’s probably too late to change disciplines. Sigh.
David Brooks (not that one)
@Roger Moore: Comcast. Whatever else you think of them, their Internet and Cable support have competent techs as first POC, and they know who you are as soon as they pick up. My experience, anyway.
suzanne
@burnspbesq: Ooooooh, I’m prison bound, done wrong one too many tiiii-iiimes…
YAY! Must! Download!
gogol's wife
@Walker:
Amen brother.
Cassidy
Love me some Social D….can’t wait.
Lisa
For those of us who are out the door by 5:00 am, on the bus by 5:20, and on the MARC train by six, those early morning calls are appreciated. I hate being halfway to DC when I find out that the university I work at is closed. Then I have to hop off the train and wait 45 minutes for the next motherfucker heading back to Baltimore.
David Brooks (not that one)
@Lisa: For finding out whether the place is closed before leaving home, there’s this thing called the Internet.
Angry Black Lady
unbieberly, indeed.
Bill Murray
@dr. bloor: sorry to be unclear. I’m a professor at a University, so get the stupid alert calls. eta: I’m an ink — one income no kids
Mnemosyne
@Bill Murray:
Shouldn’t that be “oink”? Or is the “o” silent? :-)
Smedley
@Zifnab: Sued? Arrested? for what?? What fascist world do you occupy? Oh wait, I forgot your an authoritarian.
Response was appropriate! And it won’t happen again.
Fleas correct the era
@David Brooks (not that one):
Comcast. Whatever else you think of them, their Internet and Cable support have competent techs as first POC, and they know who you are as soon as they pick up. My experience, anyway.
-=-=-=-=-=-=-
This must be a Comcast located in some alternative universe. The Comcast I know definitely does not employ competent techs who know things. Who you are, what a cable modem is … whether it’s Tuesday is about as good as it gets, and I’m not completely confident they know that.
Bruce (formerly Steve S.)
Hang on a minute. This guy has five kids aged five and under and his biggest problem is a robocall? Uh, no. This guy’s biggest problem is that he doesn’t get robocalls about 10 PM every night. Sorry, Doug, but you punched the wrong button. I get tired of these SOBs who get a goddamned tax break every time they ejaculate and then complain about a fucking phone call. Fuck this guy. Until those of us who fuck responsibly get a tax break this cockknock can just shut his fucking piehole.
DecidedFenceSitter
@David Brooks (not that one): If only the internet updated their websites in time.
For example this morning I walked into work at 6:05. This meant at 4:45, I went out started the car to make it easier to remove the ice, finished getting dressed for work, kissed the wife good bye (her alarm due to go off at 5:30), and scraped off the car.
I didn’t get the government operating status email till after I got in. On my drive in, three school districts went from 2-hour delays to closed.
So phone call at 4:45 to let me know? That would be a nice requirement. If you don’t want to hear the phone ring, shut it off.
Robert Waldmann
This post is
__ a fair post
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x_ one of the three best posts I have ever advised.