1348 Penmanship Shmenmanship, Who Cares?

Tuesday, July 3, 2007

Rereading the previous post, I get a feeling of suppressed annoyance. It really has nothing to do with the credit card issue, because that has nothing to do with me.

It's penmanship.

And other idiocies.

Renewals aren't too bad - I stick a preprinted label on the form when I mail them out, so it's easy to figure out who sent it back with their check. Of course, there's always the three or four who don't return the form with their checks, or who for some unknown reason tear the top part, with the label, off. Duh? Why? There's always a few.

The real frustration comes from the new members. They fill out the form with their name, address, phone number, and email address.

Don't they realize that someone has to READ that thing? Is this a "1", or a "7", or a "9"? Is that an "o", or a "u", or an "a" ? And then there are the ones whose name is just a scrawl - I can't even tell how many letters there are, let alone what individual letters are. Of the 18 new members in this batch today, I had difficulty reading 12 of them. I could take the information off the checks for a few, or a preprinted return label on the envelope, but the rest I had to guess.

That really really bugs me.

Then there's the folks who put their full name and address on the form - and leave off the zip code. They don't know their zip code? They don't write or dictate their address very often?

I don't understand.

When I worked for The Company I often ran meetings where attendance was mandatory. I passed around an attendance form, and each and every time, I warned people that if I couldn't read their names, they would NOT be credited with attendance, and they'd have to go through it again. And yet, after every meeting, I couldn't figure out fully 20% of the names, even with the department lists in hand for comparison.

Idiots.

Yeah. I'm frustrated.
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