A rant of sorts

[rsc]

I am in charge of updating the mailing list for the Lavender Country & Folk Dancers, which includes adding the addresses that we harvest at our dances. I assume that I''m not the only one who thinks it should be bloody obvious that, in writing an address that somebody else is going to have to transcribe, there would be an advantage to writing it in such a way that said person will have no trouble figuring out what it says. Indeed, the latest version of the mailing list form (which I created), says, very clearly:

*****Please print legibly*****

Nonetheless, I have an address that I can't read unambiguously. And, of course, it's one of those clever names that has no relation to the name of the person whose address it is, and indeed appears to make no sense whatever (although I assume it means something to its owner), so it's difficult to even make an educated guess. This happens a lot.

So, I find myself asking, as so often: What are people thinking?

Comments

[jss]

Either they're not thinking, or they're cagily writing garbage so they cannot have their addresses harvested.

[thnidu.livejournal.com]

Hmmm... if you have only a couple of possible readings for it, send both/all of them an appropriate note.

[rsc.livejournal.com]

Given that they're signing up voluntarily so that they'll get presuambly useful information by email, the latter seems unlikely.

[rsc.livejournal.com]

It's not like I'm not aware that there's a practical solution (in fact, I more or less did that). That doesn't really make it less irritating.

[pyrzqxgl.livejournal.com]

There's just no end of people with really horrible handwriting. I'm usually pretty good at making it out, though there was one person whose email address I parsed as "begin a rug" (thinking she must be yet another fiber-arts person) but which actually turned out to be "bug in a rug".

[thaaang.livejournal.com]

I do filing at work on Fridays (gets me off the phones for an hour), and there's one or two people there who write so lightly that their writing doesn't photocopy. So if I can find out from the HR guy (or based on the order of the copies compared with the originals, if I have the originals handy) whose mailboxes the copies should go into, all they're getting is a blank form with the HR guy's signature on it. I swear someday I'm just going to tack one of 'em up on a bulletin board with a "please press firmly." note on it or something, but that'd probably be deemed bitchy.

[bratman.livejournal.com]

How about you scan the list in, post it in your journal, and let us all guess?

[rsc.livejournal.com]

Why do people keep assuming that I'm asking for assistance, rather than just kvetching?

[bratman.livejournal.com]

Is that kind of like clucking?

[rsc.livejournal.com]

Not exactly.