Snow Day!

Hey, lookit me blogging twice in a row!

I just got home from my office. I drove 25 miles in white-knuckle, blizzard conditions, only to arrive and find that nobody was there.

Apparently, my boss decided last night to close the office today, because of the inclement weather. However, the way he chose to let me know this ... was by e-mailing my inter-office e-mail account.

Now, of course, I have no idea how to check that account from home. I gather it's possible, and involves logging into our company server and some other voodoo, but it's fairly cryptic to me.

When I got to work and found it abandoned, I called my boss. He told me that his standard procedure was to use his home computer to log into the office server, and pull up our contact database, which is where my contact info is stored. However, since our office had lost power last night, the server was off and he couldn't log in. So the only way he knew to reach me was through my office e-mail address.

But you know what? That's BS. This is the year 2008. His home computer had power, he had internet access, and there are a million other ways -- 'net-related or not -- that he could have located my contact info. Let's count off a few, shall we?

I'm in the phone book. That means he could have looked me up on whitepages.com.

It also means, even if he didn't have internet access, that he could have used 411 to get my number.

He could have googled my name -- one of the top few hits would probably have some mention of, or link to, my e-mail address.

(EDIT: Okay, maybe that one's not fair. I just googled myself -- a search for my name revealed a link to a website that I contribute to, and where I have an e-mail account that forwards to my regular one -- but that fact isn't easily discoverable from the main page. And a search for my name plus "e-mail" turned up my public Facebook profile, which could be used to send me a message -- but I understand that my boss might not think "Facebook" would be the ideal way to go in reaching me.)

Okay, google aside, there are other ways to find my home e-mail address. I've e-mailed my boss from that account before. He could have searched through his old messages to find it. (Sort by name and there I am!)

Also, my company gave me a cellphone for office use. I generally bring it with me to various courthouses and registry offices when I'm running errands and filing paperwork, so I can call the office if there are any problems -- and I tend to leave it off when I'm off-duty -- but my boss could have tried anyway! I just checked the phone, and I have no missed calls and no voicemail messages -- he didn't even bother to call.

"Well, if your cellphone number was in the unreachable contact database..." No. We all have office cellphones, and the phone numbers are arranged in a sequence (i.e. I have one number, an attorney has the next number up, my boss has the next one after that, etc etc). If my boss knows his own cellphone number, he could easily have doped out mine.

Heck, he could/should have it programmed into his cell.

Heck, while I'm at it, why don't they have my home number programmed into their cells? They call me at home often enough.


So -- yeah. Off the top of my head, I just rattled off about six legitimate ways that my boss could have tried to find a way to contact me. And I'm a little steamed that he didn't try ANY of them -- instead opting for the lazy way out, and using the inter-office system to tell me not to come to the office.

Can anyone else think of any ways I missed? How else can you use the internet, the phone company, or plain old common sense to find someone's contact information?

I guess I'm happy to have a snow day -- I'm swamped with finals, and can certainly use the extra time. But I really wish I hadn't had to slog through six inches of snow and drive fifty miles in terrible conditions just to discover it.

Bah.