Mister Yuck

The Dallas ISD has an automated call out system.  It's really quite efficient for people who don't have any other way of receiving the necessary information that those call-outs provide.  I appreciate them when they announce something important like a school closure for inclement weather, which they have done three times lately.

The thing is, they've gotten slap-happy.  I have received calls to participate in staff training events, textbook reviews, test preview sessions, feedback about the student code of conduct and of course, the notifications about days off due to inclement weather.  So far this calendar year, I have fielded 18 calls from this service.  I know that because each of these calls is accompanied by an email with the voice message in an attachment, in case I wanted to play back the recording from my computer.  These calls have ranged in purpose, but they have been pretty frequent.  I got so irritated with the whole thing that I added a name and a photo to the contact information.  I saved three phone numbers to that contact, as the robo-calls seem to come in from different sources.  I had initially used an image of a skull and crossbones, but after careful consideration, I determined that the best option for the picture that appears on the phone screen is none other than Mr. Yuck, a picture from the '70s of a disgusted face that was used in stickers placed on poisonous things that kids should not ingest.  I give you the picture that shows on my screen whenever a robo-call arrives:

Seems appropriate.  

On the night of February 22nd, Mr. Yuck accompanied a call that school would be cancelled on the 23rd.  That call arrived around 6:30 pm.  On the 23rd, I got a call around 6:30 pm telling me that there would be no school on the 24th.  You see a pattern, here?  

On the 24th, my second snow day was wrapping up and the city was wondering if its children would be in classrooms tomorrow.  The phone rang at around 6:30.  Mr. Yuck was on the screen,  I was certain that this would be the call to either cancel the following day or the notification to snap out of sweatpants mode and put on my teacher face.  It was, however, a call to invite me to participate in a feedback survey about the student code of conduct.  

Man, you can't play with me like that.  Don't establish a precedent like that, then call me about the student freaking code of conduct.  Maybe an email would have been nice.  That way, you could send a link rather than telling me where to go on the web.  

I woke this morning to the first day of spring break.  Tomorrow will be the beginning of Daylight Saving Time.  I sincerely hope that the people down at robo-call central trust me to adjust my clocks prior to school resuming in over a week.  While I am aware that this is a first-world problem, I genuinely wish there was some way to opt out of the non-essential calls from Mr. Yuck.