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Asking For Help On Using Email Is A Crime?
from the don't-teach-anyone-that! dept
In a somewhat bizarre dispute that must have more to do with local political positioning rather than any actual outrage, two city council members in Ohio are accusing another council member of misusing resources for asking a city employee how to use her city council email account. This seems like a perfectly normal request -- especially for someone who admits she is computer illiterate. She didn't ask them to set up a personal website for her, but how to use the specific account given to her as a city council member. Of course, thanks to all of this, she's given up on email completely.
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Typical
This is regular behavior for city/state government. Everything has to have a procedure. You have to follow the procedure, or you get your hand slapped. Why? Who knows, but that's the way it is. I know, I used to work for a state agency.
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The Bigger Crime
The Bigger Crime is that once again government is staffed by morons. How stupid does one have to be not to be able to figure out email. Also gotta subtract points on the fact that instead of making a greater effort, she's just given up on learning how to use email. Worse yet, she used to be a librarian - so either she was really bad at it, or she's in the early stages of dementia. Sounds like a good topic for a reality show called "Dumb and Dumber". Don't get me started on the IQ's of the people who elected her...
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Re: The Bigger Crime
The councilwoman's intelligence (or lack thereof) is not the issue. The issue, apparently, is that she asked a city worker how to use a city service, received help, and is being attacked for it. That is base, mean, and just plain. If one wants to attack a political opponent, one should do so without stooping to leveling accusations based on an ultra-strict (and likely incorrect) interpretation of the rules.
On the subject of her computer skills, one should remember that computer literacy is not easily gained no matter how basic the skill seems after mastery. I agree, however, and that she should not have given up on herself so easily. If I were her constituent, I would have serious questions about her ability to perform in her capacity as an elected city official.
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Re: The Bigger Crime
So in the light of this bashing, then you are able to calculate the base operation of a thermal reaction, and the reaction to the environment over the next ten years, given the dynamics of our planet, should there be a detonation of a thermal nuclear device in a specified location.
No? Oh I see, you are not a professor of thermal dynamics.
Then surely you would be able to calculate the trajectory of a craft that will travel to the furthest planet of our solar system, to include the implications of gravimetric variations and implications in passing close to other planets on the way for further study.
No? Well then "How stupid does one have to be not to be able to figure out......."
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More Info
The two council members have actually brought in the police to investigate.
There's more to the story though. The woman is supporting an ordinance that will change the technical guy's job title from "Specialty Clerk" to "Information Technology Coordinator", with a big raise in pay. The two council members who brought the charges oppose the change.
News Article
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Technicalities
While I agree that this sounds completely ridiculous, there may be some cause for the complaint. The city employee may not be tasked to provide help for "civilians" (which city council members often are), and the councilwoman's asking for help could be viewed as exerting undue influence and a misuse of resource.
As an analogy, assume city council people were provided typewriters to type letters to constituents. A councilmember asking a secretary for typing lessons could be construed as an inappropriate use of the secretary's time.
I'm not trying to justify the other politicians' actions, but simply trying to see why there might be some minute validity to the complaint.
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No Subject Given
Teaching people how to use something not only benefits that person, it also reduces the amount of time you have to spend helping repeatedly.
Give a man a fish ... he eats for a day.
Teach a man to fish & he can feed himself.
It's a shame we have all gotten so selfish
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Re: No Subject Given
> Teach a man to fish & he can feed himself.< br>
Throw a non-swimmer in the ocean and he'll catch fish for the rest of his life.
Pity that seems to have been the approach of the local council in this case...
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