Our changing world

[rolanni]

So, today I needed to write a check for a credit card payment.  I looked, and looked and looked for the proper entity to which to assign the check, found two invitations to pay my bill on line; and a box to fill in with the amount I was paying, but no MAKE CHECK PAYABLE TO...

...finally, I made the check payable to the name of the card, with some misgiving, and then! saw! in no more than three point type -- tiny enough, yes, to be a Design Element, in a single line, right at the break where the payment coupon separates from the bill --

make check payable to Card Services

OK, fine.  I added Card Services to the payment line, and then bethought to write a note, which I did, asking that the check payable instructions be made visible.

It was only after I had folded the note with the check and the coupon into the envelope that I realized that the children -- by which I mean people who were students at the college when I worked there in 2011, who could have reasonably been expected to graduate by now -- did not read, or write, cursive.

So, my note may arrive on the desk of someone who cannot read it, and who may have to call for a manager or a vice president, or. . .someone. . .to translate it for them.

Does this open up a new line of work?  Cursive Reader?

Maybe I can get a job.

In the meantime, back to work I go.

Comments

[bandicoot.livejournal.com]

I just find it so hard to believe that schools are turning out illiterates now. It just boggles my mind. I'll refrain from an actual rant ;)

Since my handwriting isn't anything to write home about (!), it does make me wonder how some of those people manage to read my checks ;p

[rolanni.livejournal.com]

I had it very carefully explained to me that the children are NOT illiterate; they can read, and type, and print by hand. Cursive is outmoded, and old fashioned and Nobody Uses It Anymore. It has gone the way of the appendix. Or Latin. Everything is done by keyboard or on-screen nowadays, which is So Much Faster.

Ah.

[bandicoot.livejournal.com]

Education is too important to be left to educators. Some people need get out of their ivory towers and get their faces rubbed in some reality.

And I'd argue about kids being able to read, write and type as well. At least a lot of the ones I've seen in "action"...

[attilathepbnun.livejournal.com]

Seriously? *blinks in astonishment*

[c lostoski (from livejournal.com)]

I have it on good authority from people who have put a check in the incorrect envelope when paying bills, that they invariably these days go to a lockbox, from which they are deposited, untouched by human hands, into the account of the entity that owns the lockbox. Regardless of the Payee on the check. So even if your check was made out to BigDepartmentStore, if it ended up in BigCreditCardCompany's lockbox, BigCreditCardCompany would get the money.

Your attached note may or not be passed on to someone the entity who owns the lockbox by the minions who open the envelopes, who may or may not be someone who deals with the subject of your note.

Sigh.

Post Office? Not here

[catherine ives (from livejournal.com)]

Where I live the Post Office has become very unreliable. Mail that used to take about a day or to to get there can now take days. Small envelopes, by the way, can fall between the works of the big sorting machines. So....I have all my credit cards on auto pay out of my checking account.

In July the main mail sorting center in our state will be shut down. My mail will be sorted in Las Vegas, NV. A gamble for sure. Our Post Office is, of course, slowly going broke due to weird regulations imposed on it by Congress. And since Congress cannot do anything these days we may end up without a mail system at all. That will be interesting. Or not.