automate this

Where the hell are the Jetsons when you need them?

Okay, seriously. Back in the day - when we were knee-high to a grasshopper and the world still held joy and wonder - we were told that we'd have flying machines to get to work, dishes would wash themselves and we'd have nothing to do but shop and look pretty.

Maybe that isn't your idea of fun, but we're sure as shit that we'd be pretty happy not having to come to this drudgery everyday until someone out there recognizes our magnificent linguistic prowess and gives us a three-book-deal. (in reality, we'll take a one book deal, but let's not get ahead of ourselves here)

Maybe we wouldn't be all Judy Jetson, shopping with George's credit card and sending the kids off to school. In fact, there's little chance anything like that would happen. But she did have the cutest little outfits, didn't she?

The point here is that we were sold a promise - albeit slightly unspoken - in our five-year-old suggestive state that we'd have more things automated by now, including jobs like ours. And that would leave us with more time to, well, who knows what we'd do with all that time on our hands. We've been working for eons.

According to loose promises of shows like the Jetsons, here are three things that we think should be automated. Like now.


mail
We know there are nifty little machines that fold letters, stuff them in envelopes, seal said envelopes and affix sufficient postage. We've seen them. Why pay us $X.xx/hr to stuff envelopes? If ever there was an overpaid task, this would be it. We might not make a ton of cash, but we're pretty sure there's a better way to spend our paid time than stuffing paper into envelopes and licking postage stamps. Get on it and bring automated mail to the masses.

phone
How many times have we told you that answering the phone is so 70's? We won't bug you about the fax machine (now there's a peach ripe for the pickin') if you will get off your ass and get an adequate, functioning and friendly automated telephone tree. Pony up, big britches. Besides - it'll give us a chance to test out that Christopher Walken voice-message thing.

filing
With the scanning, the email and the virtual office shit you've got going on, it's excrutiating to realize that you still have us doing filing - not to mention that you expect us to use an alphabetizer. Archaic. Get rid of the paper, save a rain forest in Brazil and join the twenty-first century before you go the way of the dodo bird.


Once you get cracking on these babies, you'll be amazed at how truly efficient we can be. The maybe - just maybe - you'll see that we are more than the envelope-stuffing, telephone-answering, file-alphabetizing eye candy you seem to think we are.

~ Paige