From: glen mccready 
  To: Dead Beef <0xdeadbeef@substance.abuse.blackdown.org>
Date: Wed, 19 Jul 1995 21:08:54 -0400

---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Wed, 19 Jul 1995 17:05:03 -0400
From: Keith Bostic <bostic@CS.Berkeley.EDU>
To: /dev/null@python.bostic.com
Subject: Excerpted: WhiteBoard News for July 14, 1995

Forwarded-by: joeha@microsoft.com

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
North York, Canada:

The mayor of this Toronto suburb has put voice mail on permanent hold by
decreeing that a real person must answer all government calls during
business hours.

"It's the stupidest thing I have ever seen in my life," Mayor Mel Lastman
said of voice mail, those irritating telephone message systems that are
the scourge of the modern office.

Lastman said he had enough when he could not reach his city solicitor on
his way to an important meeting.

"How's talking to a machine going to solve your problem?" he said Tuesday.

Lastman received 343 supportive calls in seven hours from people around
Southern Ontario after a local newspaper published his recent decree.

"I hit a nerve: that everyone is fed up with it," said the gravelly voiced
mayor.  He said people have hung up in fright after realizing they had
actually reached the mayor and not an answering machine.

"Any government that has voice mail isn't worth its salt," Lastman said.
"If you're in the service industry, you're better off answering."