A much shorter rant today, thank you

Yesterday was Boss' Day (I believe this is how Sr. Lucilla would have rendered it) which was not a particularly big deal here at my undisclosed location since I have neither a supervisor nor any employees. Which no doubt explains why I spend far too much time on line....

I begin to suspect that having a boss, or a staff, or both, helps one stay mentally sharp. Which no doubt explains my continuing decline....

Of course it didn't help the (now former) CTA employee who approved 3,000 signs for rapid transit cars in which the name of one stop was misspelled -- and instead of the transit help line listed the cell phone number of some guy named Nick.

Last week I got the bill for the new Sullivan's Law Directory, the publication of record that Chicago lawyers (or their assistants) turn to first to look up the phone or fax numbers of fellow lawyers. Which was odd, because the directory came in almost three weeks ago. My new office address and phone number are properly listed in the new edition... which was apparently unavailable to the person who sent out the bill: The bill went to my old office.

Over the weekend I received the amended declarations on my auto policy, adding the car we just bought and deleting the one that Middle Son managed to total on us last Summer. I've ranted recently about the difficulties I encountered supplying the necessary information. Now the insurance company's new declarations deletes the car that should be deleted... but resurrects a van that was traded in two years ago and adds it back to the policy, in place of the van that replaced it.

I blame technology. We can do things faster, sure -- but are we doing them better? And even as our habits of care are melting away, our expectations are growing steadily more unreasonable. Just last week, Long Suffering Spouse told me the story of a fellow teacher who gave a test to a struggling student at 8:30 am. The student's mother, concerned about her child's preparation or lack thereof, sent an email at 9:30 -- roughly 15 minutes after the class had ended -- asking the teacher to advise of the child's grade on the test. But the teacher did not respond. Actually, she didn't know about the email immediately since she had classes all morning.

My wife's colleague did check her email over the lunch break, however. That's when she found the email I just told you about -- and two increasingly shrill follow-ups.

Of course, I should probably take this as a cue to close now and return a few phone calls and emails myself.

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By the way: Is it "e-mail" or "email"? Lately I've seen the word rendered without the hyphen more often than not... but is that the now preferred spelling? Please enlighten me.