DEAR ABBY: You ask your readers to share their pet peeves with you. Well, here's mine: I cannot overemphasize how annoying it is when people try to send a fax and enter the number of the phone line.
I am an assistant in a busy office. At least three times a week someone will try to send a fax and dial our main office number by mistake. I answer the phones and hear the high-pitched BEEP. Once wouldn't be that big a deal, but often the sender has walked away from his or her fax machine and it redials again and again. It is annoying and a waste of my time.
Please advise people to first double-check to make sure they have the correct fax number, and second, not to walk away from the machine until they're certain the fax is going through. This should be common sense, but I see less and less common sense these days. Thanks, Abby. -- FRUSTRATED IN COLORADO
DEAR FRUSTRATED: I'm printing your letter, but there is no guarantee it will resolve your problems. Of course it makes sense to check the number one is calling or faxing, but from what I have observed, people are trying so hard these days to race through their work assignments, that mistakes keep piling up to the point where efficiency suffers. Maybe it's time to simply slow down and quit multitasking.