Friday, June 19, 2009

Goddamn Robots

I had to send an email to the Illinois State Board of Education yesterday, because I think they've overlooked a college course I took (They say I'm "deficient coursework in the psychological assessment of students with disabilities within the LBSI scope." Since I got an A in MSE528, "Psycho-Educational Testing," I can't tell whether they missed that course, whether I need more than one course, or whether I need more than 3 semester hours in that area . . . . and their letter doesn't specify, of course.

I attempted to resolve the matter by phone, but the number given for the certification department gave a busy signal no matter how many times I called over two days, of course.

Beginning to sense a pattern, I went to the ISBE website and clicked the "Contact" link. A web form presented itself for duty with reassuring alacrity, and I proceeded to fill it out and hit "Submit." A small red line of text appeared, thanking me for sending in my comments and/or questions and assuring me that my query would be answered as promptly as possible.
Success!

I should have had the sense to leave it at that, but instead I foolishly proceeded to open my email. Thunderbird cheerfully served up two messages from the ISBE Killer Robot Division (Dept. of Eating Old People's Medicine Dept.)* which had both apparently been delivered at 11:35 a.m. and which said--I am not making this up--this:
Delivery Status Notification (Failure)
This is an automatically generated Delivery Status Notification.

Delivery to the following recipients failed.

certification@isbe.net
And yet also this:
Confirmation From : Certification
hi,

Thank you for contacting the Illinois State Board of Education.
We will make every effort to respond as quickly as possible.

Very Best Regards,

Public Information Center
Illinois State Board of Education

Notice that State Board of Education Robots don't capitalize very consistently? So did I. "ISBE ro-bot 4-4-7-3 does not und-er-stand your hu-man e-mo-tion of 'frus-tra-tion.' But ISBE ro-bot 4-4-7-3 finds this 'frus-tra-tion' fas-cin-a-ting. ISBE ro-bot 4-4-7-3 must cre-ate more frus-tra-tion in or-der to stu-dy your strange hu-man feelings. . ."

1 comment:

Don said...

* Didja click the link? Didja? Hee hee.