Please stop asking us for obituaries

[depechemodefan]

There is this womansince 2006 or 2007, who mails us requests to look up obituaries. I've mention her before, how she will be told by us that X, Y and Z had no obituaries, and months latter re-request them. Then again she would be told there were no obits, and I will tell to please keep track of the people she requests obits for, since she keeps on sending requests for people we say have no obits.

It is because of her that we installed a "only 5 requests per month per person" rule. As you guessed, she got 2 cousins to also make requests, though so far only 1 cousin has been making requests for these past years.

She mail in her requests, and here is one request. Also, seems long ago she learned the name of 2 people in our dept.:

Febuary 20, 2012
Samantha or Mike Vandershorts
c/o City of X library dept
(our address)

RE: NEED 5 OBITUARIES PRETTY PLEASE

Samantha or Mike

Here are the following:

A died June 4, 1991
B died January 7 1992
Marianne Kay "Mary" (Simon) Vieaux died October 12, 2005 (we were told by distant cousin, that they did have an obituary on her. She didn't have one; because she lived out of state)
D died March 4, 2006
E died October 5, 2008 burial was 10/8/2008 was told by Earthman's funeral home that a better copy of this obituary was produced. Have one that stated: FUNERAL ARRANGEMENTS WERE PEDNIG; that's it.

REMINDER: DO NOT SCAN ANY OBITUARIES TO MY EMAIL ADDRESS "AT ALL" PLEASE.ALWAYS NEED OBITUARIES' HARD COPIES SENT TO ME-ON ALL OF THEM THAT HAVE BEEN ASKED OF YOU ALL!!

Thanks for everything you all!!

Sincereley,

Fucking Cunt
(add)
Lousianna


Note, I changed names of every one and death dates
First, I guess hse thinks Samantha and Mike are married. At least leave out Mike's last name if you dont' know Samantha's last name.
She color-coded. She used caps. She bolded. She must enjoy her compuer skills, or she is 5 years old, and just learned how to bold, use caps and use color.

For Marianne Kay "Mary" (Simon) Vieaux, she requested an obit 2 times before. If we are not finding it, it's not there. This cousin is probably wrong about an obit, or thinking of someone else. Or maybe someone in another town ran an obit, so it won't show up in our paper.

We send there the hard copies and scan her the obits. She shouldn't bitch about telling us that we know that we have to send hard copies.

All these people she request obits for are in my city of surrounding area. Is there no relatives in this area to come to the library to look this up?

I'm probably over-reacting, but she has been doing this for years, and she is annoying. Years ago one of her letter said that we were slow, "oh well, I guess there is nothing to be done about it!"

Ugh, hate her.
Oh, surprise, no obit was found for any of these people this time

[dalesys]

The obit you want to read:

C,F'n Not seen by neighbors for 7 weeks. Found under 1400 pounds of hardcopy printouts. Will be missed by millions of flybabies.

[Pixilated]

Love it!

It's almost a shame you can't institute a "two obit requests per month for any given extended family" rule.

It's also a shame you can't tell her that she can take the scanned copies or she can take nothing.

[PepperElf]

and... she sends some requests over and over for people who don't have obits?
perhaps they're not dead yet?

(is she hoping they are? or perhaps trying to figure out why those individuals aren't talking to her?... although if they are still alive and ignoring her i think i can figure out why...)

[depechemodefan]

perhaps trying to figure out why those individuals aren't talking to her?... although if they are still alive and ignoring her i think i can figure out why...

Really. She does have the death dates, just not everyone has a family member buy an obituary in the newspaper, therefore, no obituary.

Just think, when she looks at an obituary, and finds next of kin, these people getting a letter/ph call from her. At least the dead don't have to deal with her anymore.

I forgot one important thing. We only charge for making a copy; we don't charge for just looking. So she isn't paying if we don't find anything. We really need to start charging people for looking, but our director has to go to City Council to propose a change in how we charge people, and obviously no one has bothered to do that.

[thatcrazyredhead]

Why is she requesting so many obituaries? Unless she's somehow related to all of these people and compiling an extensive genealogy, I can't think of a single reason why she'd want or need them.

[Sheldonrs]

Why is she requesting so many obituaries? Unless she's somehow related to all of these people and compiling an extensive genealogy, I can't think of a single reason why she'd want or need them.

Maybe she's with the census beaureau but is really lazy. :-)

[depechemodefan]

For this woman, she sends two requests, though one of the request supposedly comes from her cousin. Noticed how the cousin wrties exactly like her:

Febuary 20, 2012
Samantha or Mike Vandershorts
c/o City of X library dept
(our address)

RE: NEED 5 OBITUARIES LOOKED UP

Samantha or Mike:

I'm typing this letter to you all; about NEEDING 5 OBITUARIES LOOKED UP.

They are as follow:

G died...
H died...
I died ...
J died...
K died...

On these obituaries Fucking Cunt was told & written down, that the microfilms might have/were missing at the times she did forward them to you all -- on the first go around. Hopefully this time around, you all may retrieve them as we hope & pray. It's holding us up, on completing/finishing with their little family trees "now".

Thanks again for letting me send these death notices to you all. I do appreciate all the help, that you have given to cousin fucking cunt & myself.

February 21st is FAT TUESDAY which means: HAPPY MARDI GRAS!!

reminder: cousin fucking cunt will be paying for my obituaries. Her address is: address

Sincerely,
Stupid dupe

[Merriweather]

I get the genealogy thing, my sister is heavily into that. But my sister does her own research - she goes to the library and searches thru microfiche, databases, etc herself. She doesn't rely on someone to do all that (am I correct that you don't charge for anything except the actual printing out of info?) for nothing or close to it.

Can you at least keep a record of the requests she makes, and your response - so if she requests the same thing twice, you don't have to look it all up again just to say that no obit exists? At least that would limit the research to new requests, not wasing time looking for something you've already determined doesn't exist.

Can you add a note to an email to her without getting into trouble, something nice but letting her know that with the person's name & death date, it is thoroughly checked, and if determined not to exist, no amount of re-checking will help. Maybe a short explanation of why there might not be an obit (not everyone pays for one, maybe it was placed in a different paper than what you have access to, etc. etc.).

[depechemodefan]

(am I correct that you don't charge for anything except the actual printing out of info?)

That's correct.

Can you at least keep a record of the requests she makes

We do.

and if determined not to exist, no amount of re-checking will help.

She didn't pay attention the time I did type up a note when we sent the hard copies.

Maybe a short explanation of why there might not be an obit

We have a canned response for that:

This is not unusual. The policy of the (City) daily newspapers has always been that obituaries are paid announcements; therefore, many people's deaths are not announced in that form.

She always sent requests by mail, though for the short time she had email, she had problems accessing it.

[MoonCat]

Maybe you could keep a form letter handy to send her that just repeats the same information:

AA BB obituary does not exist.
CC DD obituary does not exist.

Or keep a list of the ones she's asked for that you don't have and send her a note saying, "We've already looked for these, they don't exist. Please do not keep requesting the same names."

[taurinejunkie]

OP reminds me of a customer from my 411 days. She would ask for, say, Roman Catholic churches in Toronto, and then insist on receiving the first 3 numbers after the area code, the name of the street, and the etymology of the street name (which, surprise surprise, is not part of the listings). It got to the point where a supervisor told her to stop calling, but sadly enough, as she was extremely annoying but not openly rude or anything like that, nothing could be done to actually block her from calling us.

[Pagan]

I get the genealogy thing, my sister is heavily into that. But my sister does her own research - she goes to the library and searches thru microfiche, databases, etc herself. She doesn't rely on someone to do all that (am I correct that you don't charge for anything except the actual printing out of info?) for nothing or close to it.

That's not always feasible for the researcher. My mom and dad are both researching their families. Starting with my mom's maternal grandfather, and records she needs to get are in Scotland, others on her mother's side are in England and Wales. Not really realistic for her to jet over there. With my grandfather's side, they're all over the place in the Mid-West and the South. Again, not financially feasible for her to go to all of these places.

[computeraide]

Why is she requesting so many obituaries? Unless she's somehow related to all of these people and compiling an extensive genealogy, I can't think of a single reason why she'd want or need them.

Maybe she's trying to keep her phone book up to date. When someone dies, she crosses them out of the book?

[dalesys]

She always sent requests by mail, though for the short time she had email, she had problems accessing it.

Who wants to bet that whenever her PC said "You've got mail!" she went out to the street to check?



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