They Still Make You?

People Who Use Their Work Email Address for Personal Correspondence, Colorado Employee Sends a Racist Email

With Gmail, hotmail, and even aol, you would assume that J.Crew would not be sending ads for its boyfriend merino wool sweaters to an email address with the suffix .gov.

Or that is to say, with the availability of boundary protecting (and free) email accounts, no one needs to rely on their work email to conduct personal business. 

Work email addresses, issued by an employer to employees to conduct professional business, join professional list serves and figure out who is bringing what to the office potluck, are great for many things... Your work email address, for instance, can be used to ask your boss a question about an assignment, or be used to get an update from your interns on the project they are working on. 

On the other hand, work email addresses are not so great for making plans to go out to dinner with old college friends, or for receiving automated reminders to pay your personal credit card, or to do what a Colorado Department of Transportation employee did recently.

The Associated Press by way of the Huffington Post reports that:

A Colorado state employee could be disciplined for sending an e-mail showing President Barack Obama shining the shoes of former Republican vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin. The 73-year-old Colorado Department of Transportation worker forwarded the e-mail to at least four co-workers and others on Dec. 22 using her state e-mail account.

As Atlantic commentator and blogger Ta-Nehisi Coates put it in her blog entry titled "People Who Use Their Work E-Mail To Send Mass Jokes",

Get a gmail. Takes two seconds. Then you can traffic in all the racist jokes you want.

All social commentary aside, however--

Using a work email address for personal corespondent: They Still Make You?

They Still Make You? The Business Insider Hopes Not

As the decade winds down, I have stumbled across several lists of technologies and customs that became either obsolete or far less prevalent over the past 10 years.

They Still Make You? covered New York Magazine's list a couple of weeks ago. 

We also covered the Law Librarian Blog's list of obsolete learning technologies.

The Business Insider has compiled it's slide-show of technologies it found had become obsolete in the past decade:

1. PDAs
2. E-mail accounts you have to pay for
3. Dial-up
4. Getting film developed
5. Movie Rental Stores
6. Maps
7. Newspaper classifieds
8. The Landline
9. Long-Distance Charges
10. Public pay phones
11. VCRs
12. Fax machines
13. Phone books, dictionaries, encyclopedias
14. Calling "411"
15. CDs
16. Backing up your data on floppies or CDs
17. Getting bills in the mail
18. Buttons
19. Losing touch
20. Boundaries
21. Paper
22. Bonus: Record Stores

One caveat is that many of these are still ubiquitous---no one knows quite why--- but still a good indicator of what we will be seeing less of in the years to come.

The article is worth the read for the commentary and pictures.

They Still Make You? Learning Technologies We Should Look Out For

As the decade winds down, I have stumbled across several lists of technologies and customs that became either obsolete or far less prevalent over the past 10 years.

They Still Make You? covered New York Magazine's list a couple of weeks ago.

Here is the list put together by the Law Librarian Blog of learning technologies that became obsolete during the aughts:

1. Scantron Sheets

2. Overhead Projectors and Transparencies

3. Classroom VCR/DVD Players

4. Course Packs and Course Readers

5. Photocopiers

6. Microfiche

7. Language and Computer Labs

8. Paper Journals and Periodicals?

Um, maybe not obsolete...or even rare enough to make They Still Make You?  But still, nice to see what our material might be down the road.

Follow Up Friday

We here at They Still Make You like to revisit past blog posts, and find out what has happened to our found arcana since first writing about it.

• PRI's The Takeaway reported this week that vinyl albums are making a come back, and may be this holiday season's hottest gift.

• A friend told us of her experience encountering a cash only deli.  

The deli had not posted a sign indicating that it was cash only, which is specifically why our friend chose to get a salad at that establishment.  She had canceled her ATM card due to fraudulent activity and was waiting for her bank to issue a new one.  To fill the gap, she was relying on her credit card only.  So, she went into the deli, ordered a big salad, waited as the clerk made it, and then when it was time to pay she flashed the plastic -- you know where this is going-- only to hear:

"Sorry, cash only"

And because our friend could not get cash due to not having an ATM card, she had to walk away from the salad.  The joke's on the deli.  They are the ones who relied on a 'nearly bygone' business practice, failed to post signs informing customers of that fact, and then wasted supplies on a salad they could not sell to our friend because they refused to accept her [necessary] method of payment.

• And finally, a follow up from Katie W., our Tab drinker: "Me and my mom and my aunt are keeping Tab alive!! :)"

Let us know what you think about these things they still make, or anything else.

Faxing Important Documents

A casual perusal of craigslist turned up the following:

"Fax resume with salary requirements."

Businesses that required applicants to fax resumes: They Still Make You?

Anglicizing Your Name to Get Ahead in Business: Taos New Mexico's Paragon Inn Owner Orders Hispanic Employees to Adopt Anglicized Names

Last month, the AP reported on a Taos, New Mexico hotelier and his archaic business practice of requiring his employees to adopt new names. 

Specifically, Larry Whitten demanded that his majority Latino staff at the Paragon Inn adopt names that, according to Whitten sounded more American and would not confuse tourists who had purposely chosen to visit a city "where Spanish language, culture and traditions have a long and revered history."

As the Paragon (of what?) Inn's new owner, Whitten's first order of business made an impression on several of his Hispanic employees. Allegedly Whitten's told employees, including Kathy Archuleta and Martin Gutierrez that,

he was changing their Spanish [] names.

because according to Whitten

it's a routine practice at his hotels to change first names of employees who work the front desk phones or deal directly with guests if their names are difficult to understand or pronounce.

And

"It has nothing to do with racism. I'm not doing it for any reason other than for the satisfaction of my guests, because people calling from all over America don't know the Spanish accents or the Spanish culture or Spanish anything."

[crickets chirp]

When Archuleta and Gutierrez protested, Whitten fired them.  And the New Mexico chapter of the League of United Latin American Citizens, a national civil rights group, sent Whitten a letter, raising concerns about treatment of Hispanic workers.  In response Whitten alleged that the group's letter contained a racist slur against him.

Talk about Chutzpa nerve.

Whitten maintains that what he did was just good business practice and has nothing to do with ethnicity or race. 

Anglicizing your name to get ahead professionally: They Still Make You?

Cash Only

You haven’t visited an ATM in god knows how long.  Your wallet is a mess of receipts, business cards and quarters for laundry, one dollar coins from the post office, and so many pennies.

You just want a 3 dollar cup of coffee from the new hip coffee place by your office.

You go in, order your large cup of caffeine, and hand over your Visa (or MasterCard).  The clerk then says “sorry, we don’t take credit cards.  We’re cash-only.”

Stores that only take cash: They Still Make You?