No more words

I remember reading when I was a kid some probably apocryphal story—I think it was in Reader’s Digest, which has gone from America’s most widely read publication to just barely existing—about this “efficiency expert.” He would come into a company and ask for an office with a desk, a chair, and a big rug. He would direct that all memos be routed through him. And he would never come out of his office, but everything would somehow get better. And no one could figure out why. Then, when he left, they would find that half of all the memos circulated were under the rug. The point is there are too many voices. Faxing made it worse and email and texting have made it worse than that. Wait till they invent telepathy. The iThink or whatever.

I mention this because I am using a tiny sliver of a breather I have to clear out my email inbox. There are three emails in here about a yoga class the Law School is (for some reason) offering—and I’m pretty sure I deleted at least two on the same topic earlier. There’s a whole bunch of stuff about various faculty meeting agenda items. Probably a dozen about speakers and events and cocktails. Lots and lots about the newly renovated space for the School of Law’s clinics—which is really nice and will impress the ABA when they come back for the next inspection, not that I’m saying anything about what they said during the last one. Because I wouldn’t do that. There’s emails about coordinating interviews for a clinic receptionist and a new secretary. There are emails about putting signs on the door and about what the signs should say. And only once you wade through that thicket do you get to the ones about actual work: JV-FPD briefs to supervise, letters of recommendation to write, student papers to read and grade.

I know, I know. People with real jobs have inboxes the size of my sent-messages box. But I’m supposed to be really thinking about the law, you know? Anyway, it’s too much. So, with thanks to the Reader’s Digest guy, I’ve been adding certain work people to my junk mail list. That way, I just never see anything they send. Better yet, UM’s high-tech voicemail system, it turns out, can be programmed to delete messages from any extension so I never even know certain people called me. (I wonder whether this feature was invented because of sexual harassment or just regular harassment.) Point is, if you want to get rich, invent a junk-mail filter that can read and purge email based on it being pointless rather than based on author or domain. Then, I wouldn’t have to decide whether so-and-so has ever sent anything I needed or wanted to read. Still, for now, this beats the alternative.