PEOPLE!

Remember that guy I told you about who was annoying me by constantly commenting on my family tree? I told him to leave me alone, so he sent me an apology... followed by more questions and comments! I ignored him as I had clearly stated I wanted nothing more to do with him. And then the other day I get a chain letter email from him! A CHAIN LETTER! One of those "If you don't annoy and disrespect at least 5 of your friends by sending this to them, you will die" emails. I've restrained myself from sending him a nasty email informing him of his obvious flaws. I am a good person... that kind of thing is beneath me. So I am venting on here instead.

Needless to say I've made my profile on Ancestry private to avoid this kind of thing happening in the future.

Maybe it's because I work in customer services and used to spend all day reading peoples emails to the company I work for, but I cannot stand the kind of stuff I'm being sent on www.genesreunited.co.uk. It just reminds me of the kind of stupid stuff I come across at work.

At work sometimes we'd find a really random email. I never used to believe it, but some people just RANDOMLY email questions to nobody in particular. I work for a stationery company. But despite this being obvious on our website we still get really odd stuff come through such as:

- One lady wanting to know why we had stopped manufacturing Rizla rollers. (Considering we'd never, ever sold them, it's a tad random).
- One man asking whether it was ok to allow his employees to work in a place where people are smoking. Said place was a tent with one side open. Well, at least on that one I got to write back that 1) we're a stationery company, not a citizens advice bureau, 2) perhaps this might be the kind of question he'd want to address to his local council and 3) a brief search on Google confirmed my suspicion that this would contravene the Smoking Ban, and that perhaps he might want to try using Google in the future to answer his questions. Of course I said all that in a much politer way.
- One woman who wanted us to help her find the end of her sellotape.

So when I receive a comment on my family tree along the lines of :

"My ancestor has a similar surname to yours. Their first name is different, so is their birth date and place (one in Kent, the other in Northampton) and oh their surname is spelt differently but could they perhaps be the same person."

I really, really have to try hard not to send them back a rude message. I've just found 5 different messages all along those lines in my mailbox, from 5 different people (admittedly in four cases the surname was the same, but everything else was different). I have to deal with enough idiots at work, why can't I do something in my free time that doesn't involve idiots??? I only ever send messages to people when the names, dates and places match up and even then it's more a tentative hello rather than a full on questions straight off. Is that too much to ask in return??

Oh well, now I've vented I'll go send them some nice, polite replies. "No I'm afraid we don't have a match". Such is life.