There's no such thing as common sense - But this makes no sense at all, Episode III

I’m starting to get a little brighter. I’m learning it’s better to gracefully exit ridiculous situations earlier rather than later. Or maybe I am just losing the will to fight.


A week or two after the email debate, email again raises its head as a source of trouble. I am engaged in a discussion with the same woman that the “new” company has screwed up email because we now have to look up people by the last name instead of by their first. Again, the conversion revolves around being able to spell peoples last names. Eventually I have a flash of brilliance. I make an analogy of looking people up in the white pages of the phone book. I asked the woman I was talking to how she would look up my number in the phone book if they wanted to call me. The response is “Why would I want to call you?” I said it didn’t matter why. This woman then say’s “I would never call you”. I said it didn’t matter. I asked how she would look up my number. She said “I would never call you” and “I don’t know where you live so I don’t know what phonebook to use”. I said forget about calling me. I asked how she would look up anyone in the phone book. She asked whom I was referring to. I said, “how about your neighbors down the street?” The response was “I wouldn’t need to look them up, I know their number.”

At this point, I bailed out of the conversation. I recommended that she call the help desk and see if she can get corporate to change the email policy so that she could look up people by their first name.