Monday, February 27, 2012

No, the OTHER Thing I Said

I notice things.  Different things than others.  In fact, if I made any money from blogging, I could say I got paid to notice things.  Since I make preciously close to zero via blogging, I will state that one of my interests is noticing things then writing about them.

Man, that's a lot of words for nothing.

Further, I do not get paid by the word.  In fact, we've already established I don't get paid much, if at all.

More words.

Speaking of words, here's something I've noticed...  if I send an email like this:

1. I need that TPS report.


2. How do you make them look so nice?

I'll get the following response:

On their way.


You will notice that the second question never got answered.  Odds are it never got read.
Makes one wonder what would happen with this email:

1. How have you been?


2. I'm discussing eliminating your position with your boss.

The reply would probably be thus:

Things are good.


Dave Barry once noted that there's a similar phenomenon with phones, wherein the first five seconds of every phone call does not register:

Hello?


Hi, I'm going to kill your children, how are you, Bob?


Fine!


And I thought I was the one with the attention-deficit.  So how do we convince people to read the entire email?

The answer is you can't.  You have to send a separate email with each request.

Could you send me the quarterly report?


and


Could you send the quarterly report by snail mail?


In these attention-addled times, one must wonder what happens in case of emergency:

Mr Smith, your child has Dengue Fever.  He will need to be picked up immediately.

The answer, of course:

That's terrible.  Where is he?


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