I got yelled at today

Well, not really "yelled at" in the official sense.  I checked my e-mail this morning and got a scathing one from person I only faintly know from a forum.  Seems this particular person has been trying to reach me regarding a rather mundane post I made last week.  And wanted to know why I was ignoring her.  She seemed to have taken my lack of a response pretty personal. 

 Now the scathing e-mail was sent to our catch-all admin mailbox last night, with a subject line "Trying to reach Julie Dawson NOW!!!!!!!!" Now I don't use that mail address at that particular forum, so she must have went to our website and pulled that address up.  A quick scroll through my weekend e-mails found a second e-mail from her, addressed to my private addy on Saturday, with the Subject line "Where are you?" 

Now a brief note.  I've said this before.  I don't open e-mails from people I don't know unless the subject line tells me what they want.  Vague subject lines that read "check this out," "For your information," etc etc get deleted unread.  So since I didn't recognize the sender, I probably would not have opened this e-mail anyway were it not for the fact that I was looking for it. 

 Then there was a third one, send Friday night around 9 pm.  No subject line.  Again, I probably wouldn't have opened it anyway were it not for the fact that I was trying to figure out what this woman was talking about.  No subject lines are worse than vague subject lines.

I'm looking at these e-mails trying to figure out why she is so pissed and then it hits me.  It never occurred to her that people don't always check their e-mail on the weekends.  Now during the business week, I check my e-mail several times a day, because my business requires that I do that.  But on the weekends, I am rarely online.  I have a reality outside of the virtual one that is the internet.  House. Friends.  Family.  Significant Other.  Writing stories and reading books.  If I am expecting an important e-mail, I might log on for a couple of minutes, but only to see if the information I was looking for arrived.

 So I was getting reamed because I wasn't available online during the weekend for this woman to share her idea regarding my post in a forum. 

I have a friend who has a Blackberry.  His company paid for it so he could have more mobility.  Instead of being shackled to a desk, he can travel and tele-commute and all of that fun stuff, but still be available during work hours.  Problem is, he's expected to reply to his Blackberry during off work hours, too.  His boss has an epiphany at 7 pm on Saturday night, he sends a text message to my friend.  Monday morning, my friend is getting yelled at why he didn't respond to the "urgent" message Saturday.

I use to work for a person who would call me while I was driving in to work to tell me what he needed me to work on.  Meanwhile, he is sitting IN THE OFFICE two feet from my desk, and could have just leaned over and wrote a note on my blotter.  But no, he would call me while I am driving in rush hour traffic through construction.  Forget the fact that I specifically told him I don't answer my cell while driving.  I'd hear it ring, look down and see it was him.  And when I'd get to the office he would be yelling why I didn't answer the phone.

Technology makes people stupid.  I honestly believe that.  The more advance our technology, the more stupid the human race gets.  We allow ourselves to become slaves to it, and become unable to function without it.  Because the technology exists, we have to use it, and we have to use it IMMEDIATELY...even though there is logically no reason to do so, and no real urgency to justify it. 

My reply to the woman who flipped out on me is going to be a link to this article.  She'll get ticked off even more, no doubt.  But at least then she'll have a vaguely legitimate reason.