Tag: email

Help me out here

On By Luther M. SilerIn Uncategorized1 Comment

Does anybody know what this thing is? Several of them have popped up on intersections near me; I’m pretty certain they aren’t cameras because, well, they don’t look like cameras and some of them are on intersections that definitely do already have obvious cameras. There also tend to be just one or two per intersection and so they aren’t covering all four directions. I mean, it looks like a bell, but as far as I can tell they don’t make any noise and why the hell would anyone be mounting bells on the roads at intersections anyway?

I was dead to the world by 8:00 PM last night, and considered making it twice in a row tonight. I can’t explain it; I am genuinely not having bad days at work by any standard but my god am I coming home exhausted. I’m back to wondering if signing up for summer school was a mistake again, but I still feel like passing up all that money for a job I’ll be done with by noon every day is a horrendously poor decision.

In other news, I got an email today that is almost certainly a scam. I’m following up on it; if it’s a scam, it’s a quite detailed one and I’m going to follow it down the rabbit hole until the part where they ask me for money just for the lulz. If I’m wrong and it’s not a scam, it’s big news, but obviously nothing I can share just yet.

(It’s gonna be a scam. It’s definitely a scam. But at least I’ll get a post or two out of it.)

Sunday/Not Sunday

On By Luther M. SilerIn TeachingLeave a comment

I’m pleased to announce that the sense of impending dread that most teachers associate with Sundays is not currently afflicting me. I’ve been sickish all day again, as has been typical of Sundays for a while now, but beyond that, we’re prepped for class tomorrow and we’re all good. I actually got a major (sort of) task done today; our mailbox has only been tenuously attached to its base since we installed it after buying the house in 2011 and I finally bought a piece of wood of an appropriate side to attach the thing properly today. Fourteen and a half years, y’all, but the mailbox no longer wiggles when you open it. I am amazed that in all this time we’ve never had a complaint from a mail carrier; I am sure that he will notice the difference when the mail gets delivered tomorrow. Maybe there will be a thank-you note in there! It would be nice.

I also sent out the first of my roughly-biweekly parent newsletters and got a barrage of responses in rapid succession, which I suppose I should see as a good thing but which might actually have the effect of decreasing how often I send such things out. Or maybe in the future I’ll just make sure I’m somewhere where I can instantly reply to a ton of emails if necessary.

That means that it’s 7:12 PM and, since this blog post is written and my Duolingo obligations are fulfilled, I’m free to spend the rest of the night reading or playing video games. Huzzah!

I get emails

On By Luther M. SilerIn TeachingLeave a comment
  1. Ain’t nobody asking to go to your room. We all know it.
  2. This is the second to last God damn day of school and everybody is done with everything. Speaking as someone who only had five kids in his room in 3rd hour because everybody left and 32 in fifth because everybody showed up, there’s not a single damn thing wrong with letting them hang out with their friends/teachers they like under these circumstances. So long as you know where everybody went there’s no real problem.
  3. There was no reason to email the whole staff about this because now the boss has to get involved and shut the whole thing down.
    • We’re gonna do it again tomorrow even though she said not to. Email? What email?
      • Also, fire me, I dare you.
  4. Shut up.
  5. Also you’re retiring in two days just shove them all out the door and relax.

We are going to the zoo for a special Nighttime Zoo Experience tonight, so this is all you get for today, since I got home and took a nap on the couch. So have a great night.

Oh my god I hate you SO MUCH

On By Luther M. SilerIn idiocy2 Comments

My day began with an email from my boss, and that email began with the words “I don’t know how many of you remember …” and then the name of a man who I, in fact, did not remember. The email went on to say that this man’s partner had passed away, and then gave information about the viewing or the funeral or whatever.

You don’t work with me, right? Probably not. So use your reading skills and your thinkin’ brain, based solely on the small amount of information I have given you, and answer two questions for me:

  1. Does this person still work at my school?
  2. Was this person included in the email sent to the staff?

If your answers were no and no, respectively, congratulations! You possess at least a modicum of reading comprehension and common Goddamned sense.

So why the fuck did I spend all day deleting emails from the reply-all brigade expressing their condolences to Mr. So-and-So, who doesn’t work at our school any longer and has not in at least three years and furthermore could not possibly read any of the emails that you were sending to the eighty people on our staff??

And to make it worse, some of the people sending the emails joined the staff after I did, meaning they were sending their personal condolences to someone who not only was not going to see the message but they didn’t know.

How did I make it through the day without losing my shit? Am I going to get a reward for this? Please say yes. Because sooner or later I’m going to strike back, and the building will never be the same again afterwards.

Jumping off a bridge, back later.

I know, man. I know.

On By Luther M. SilerIn TeachingLeave a comment

In lieu of a post tonight, please to enjoy this brief email conversation between a student and I that actually happened this afternoon.

I love 8th graders.

An email I didn’t send

On By Luther M. SilerIn Teaching1 Comment

Dear Sir and/or Madam:

I have received your email communication of Jul 27th, and it did indeed find me well, at least for a moment, until the subject of your message sunk in and I found my previous wellness replaced with a bone-deep, nearly painful level of exhaustion. While in principle I do agree that we will be working together this year and that we should discuss such things as the curriculum we will be teaching, I feel compelled to remind you that it remains July for several more days yet, and that furthermore it is also somehow still March, and that at the moment I find myself entirely unable to do anything so civilized as “plan” for any so-called “future.” At the moment I barely even believe tomorrow is happening. Three weeks from now is literally unimaginable, and yes, I know what both of those words mean and I assure you I am using them accurately.

Furthermore, I have stalked you on Facebook and you look like a cop, and while I admit and agree that forming an early impression of someone by such means is manifestly unfair, doing so has not led to the cessation of one single bit of my current level of exhaustion. In addition, your use of “your new partner in math” as the closure to your email is unnecessarily precious when a simple “yours,” or perhaps the somewhat archaic but at least moderately humorous “Your obdt. servant” would have sufficed.

In conclusion, please do not expect a response to your query prior to the 3rd August, and later than that is a strong possibility. Responses to this message will be deleted unread, and I swear to God and baby Jesus that if you email my ass just to say “Okay!” or “Thanks!” I will kill myself on the spot and haunt the dog shit out of you and your descendants unto the 4th generation.

I remain,

L.M. Siler

In which I face Jod and walk backwards into Hell

On By Luther M. SilerIn idiocy1 Comment

It has come to my attention that there are actual human beings who think that the plural of “email” is “email.”

These people are sociopaths.

You can use “email” as a collective– “I get lots of email” or “I sent some email” if you like, but if it is used as a plural, ie, “He sent two emails”, and you don’t include that -s at the end, you are bad and wrong and you should go far away.

Or embrace the phrase “email messages,” and dodge the issue that way.

The end.

I SAID GOOD DAY!

On By Luther M. SilerIn Reading1 Comment

too-many-emailsToday was the first day in the new building where I didn’t spend the entire day running my ass off.  I spent the first teacher day and the first two days of school putting out fires and solving problems as quickly as I could– and, when necessary, that’s pretty fast— and today was the first day that felt calm.  Honestly, there were points where I was almost fishing about for something to do.

Or, at least, I would have been, were it not for the fact that I get a hundred goddamn emails a day now. There are about sixty staff members and associated personages in my building and thirty-some-odd people who have my job, and a few of us need to sit down and have a talk about what emails 1) do not need to be sent to everyone on a mailing list and 2) do not need to be sent at all.

For example: the next person to send me an email that just says “thanks” is getting smacked.  Because I just archived that email thread, goddammit, because I dealt with whatever you needed and I’m done with those emails now.  Probably 10% of my email is just “Thanks!” or something similar, and sometimes that “Thanks!” is sent to fifty people, and … goddammit, stop.  Say “Thanks in advance!” at the end of the first message.

(Note that compared to literally every other gripe I’ve had about a job ever, I recognize that this is minor.  But still.  Stop it, people.)

The last two books I’ve read have both been one-day reads, both because they were good and because they were really short.  You could do a lot worse than checking out The Armored Saint by Myke Cole and The Descent of Monsters by J.Y. Yang.  They’re both novellas, and while Yang wrote their book specifically as a novella the one weakness of Cole’s book is that it feels more like the first third of a long book rather than an entire book by itself.  It’s a minor gripe, though. Check ’em out.

Speaking of books, N.K. Jemisin won another Best Novel Hugo last night– I need to reread the Broken Earth trilogy soon– and you should read her acceptance speech, which is awesome.