Who Still Uses Fax Machines Today? The Idiocy of State Government Here in Illinois
I’m helping a friend with a problem she’s having dealing with the State of Illinois and it made me want to ask if you ever encounter anyone in the year 2012 who insists on using fax machines.
I remember when I was in eighth grade one of my classmates forgot to bring in her permission slip to go on a field trip to an amusement park — and the cruel and myopic nun who served as principal claimed she couldn’t do anything about it and was forced to make Tanesha stay at school while the rest of us went together as class to Geauga Lake for the day. Tanesha was bawling, and all Sister Roberta would do was stand there with her arms folded, lecturing the girl about how irresponsible her mother was for not making sure the permission slip was submitted before the day of the field trip.
This petty drama broiled until the bus arrived and we loaded up for the field trip, with Tanesha still crying and the nun not budging. It then occurred to me to ask Sister Roberta if either the school or the rectory next door had a fax machine — because then they could just fax a permission slip to Tanesha’s mom and then she could sign it and fax it back and then no one had to cry anymore that day and no one had to be a villain. Everyone looked at me like I was crazy until they processed that this would meet all of their rules and requirements and would be easy to pull off.
That happened in 1989, in the years before email, and I can’t think of another worthwhile encounter I’ve had with a fax machine (or fax-a-machine, as my friend Panda — and apparently others — calls it) since.
My friend Althea’s sister was laid off from work last year and her former employer is contesting her benefits — just because he can, and I think because his insurance premiums went up after laying her (and her coworkers) off work. The Unemployment Benefits Appeals process in the state of Illinois is absurd and Byzantine — and permanently stuck in the year 1989 when fax machines ruled the world.
I think it’s the absolute most stupid thing ever, but there’s no way to email people at this office — so everything that needs to be submitted for my friend’s case must be faxed or mailed. I’m used to having instant, email date and time stamped receipts for things — but when I submit documents for this case I don’t even have a way of knowing whether or not the right people received the paperwork. There’s just one fax number for the entire office, and I have to assume that the Referee in charge of Gwen’s case will ultimately get his hands on what we’ve sent.
At first, I was paying out of pocket to fax these documents from a Kinko’s but at the rates they charge that got really expensive — and then I started using a free online fax called Fax Zero. This was a great alternative because it’s free, but the pain is that I’m only allowed to send three faxes for Gwen a day at a maximum of three pages each. A nine page document has to be carved up into three separate transmissions and larger ones need to be carried over into the next day.
It’s the dumbest thing ever that this state agency doesn’t use email, especially considering that one document we needed to send in for Gwen would be “scanned in” once the Unemployment office received it. I asked if I could just email it, and the very terse woman on the phone said, “No baby, that gotta be scanned. You can’t email nothing”. I tried explaining that I could email her the PDF and she said, “You ain’t listening. I gotta scan it. It comes over the fax-a-machine and then I pick it up off the floor and I scans it in and then it’s in the ‘puter for when the Referee wants it.”
I tried one more time to tell the woman that I could just email the document as a “scanned” PDF and eliminate all this and she said, “But that’s my job so if you did that what would I have to do all day?” — which seems to be the real reason these people are still using the fax-a-machine.
I bet there’s a whole stable of government workers dependent on things staying just the way they were in 1989: the person whose job it is to keep the “fax-a-machines” stocked with paper all day, the person who picks up the papers off the floor, the woman who scans the papers into the “‘puters”, then the person (or people) who have been trained to take the “scanned” papers from wherever they go in the “puter” and email them to the administrators who need them.
Allowing people to email these documents right to the people who require them would eliminate dozens of patronage jobs given to loyal Democrat voters here in Chicagoland (at great taxpayer expense for their employment no doubt).
I’ve spent the last several hours having a very retro moment, and even craving a Tab, because Fax Zero keeps telling me that the agency’s fax machine is busy or out of paper. When’s the last time you encountered a busy signal or were thwarted in anything by a paper shortage? Those are things as frequently encountered today as wooly mammoths.
I’d love your opinion on why, exactly, we as a people accept the incompetence that exists in state and local government. Things are a little better in Washington, because I call at least one member of Congress a day to tell their staff how terrible they are, and I almost always get someone to answer the phone on the first or second ring — and 80% of the time the staffers answering are pleasant to deal with. I can also email my Congressional representatives and I always get some sort of reply, even if it’s a form letter. But, none of this is true for state and local government, at least not here in Illinois.
Why is that acceptable…and what can regular people do about it?
Thoughts?
© 2012, Kevin DuJan. All rights reserved.
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If you have a land line telephone line there are multifunction printers that will send fax transmissions or there is computer software that will let you do it and even externally prepared documents if you have a scanner. Without a land line fax is not an option.
Believe it or not, we still use fax machines. I work exporting medical equipment and still get faxes from hospitals on Caribbean islands like Barbados and Trinidad. We even got one las week from Surinam.
I'm an insurance agent licensed with a few dozen different insurance companies. All of my applications for insurance are faxed in to the insurance companies. That is their "preferred" method of application submission. I also get things that I want from our office faxed to me; especially if it is several pages long and too long to put on email attachments.
By the way, the "phone line" I use for my fax machine is a cable line, not a traditional phone line. It's one that's provided through the same company we have our tv cable, and my internet service through. By having all from the same company the price of the cable phone is almost free.
Hi, Kevin: All of your assumptions as to why the IDES is still using fax machines would normally be correct. But remember we’re talking about a democrat run cesspool. The real reason they make it such a pain is they don’t want to pay out the money they’ve extorted from employers to the unemployed but would rather spend it feathering their own nests. Unemployment and worker’s compensation are the real insurance rackets we should be talking about! cont…..
As to your friend. I’ve handled these cases and she’d better go in knowing that her former employer is going to claim she was terminated for cause. Also she MUST know what the grounds are for termination in Illinois and how they’re defined and be prepared to argue that either: a) she wasn’t terminated; or, b) the grounds on which she was terminated do not fit within those defined as justifiable under the statute(s). The less said the better; and talk of things not related to the statute are a waste of time and tick the referee off. Normally it’s an uphill battle as, contrary to even the most solid evidence, or lack thereof, referees tend to side with employers for the reason mentioned above….cont…..
I’m from a once beautiful area laid to waste by total democrat control- Youngstown, Ohio. Being from Cleveland I’m sure you know what goes on here. Anyways, I used to try and convert people through arguing policy and had no luck. Now I use the example you suggested of asking just what their economic interests are in supporting big government. (e.g. “Oh your uncle Willy lost his house while his workers comp, unemployment, government foreclosure protection act, etc. was denied? Well if he was a loser who never worked or a fat cat who had greased the skids…….that’s why I don’t like sending them our money. We never get any of it back.” Personal examples seem to work far better than arguments. Good luck to your friend.
Try these for suggestions… http://www.ehow.com/how_6688354_send-pdf-fax-mach… http://www.mercurynews.com/business/ci_19889605 http://www.answerbag.com/q_view/116235
If you have a scanner or know someone that does, most of them do faxes nowadays, too. You just have to figure out how to do it. Better yet, they don't even have to live in the same town. You could e-mail the pdfs to someone you trust with the fax info and they should be able to send it for you for free.
Facsimile machines will continue to be around for a while. There are things that just do not scan well. Then there are people who just cannot scan well enough for the end product to be usable if it was scanned and emailed. Some outfits still have to use fax because they lack the electronic facility for accurate and secure "digital signatures", and genuine signatures are still required for a lot of things (try to buy a house, get ready for writer's cramp). This is especially true of forms and whatnot that are designed with today's digital watermarks – that do not ever copy or scan properly, by design.
So yeah, they are dinosaurs, but they still have their use. I am staring at my Brother plain paper fax machine as I type this. It is not dusty. It is not full of paper, and I had to buy toner for it just last week (all due to use).
When I went to Sacred Heart School in the sixties, Sister Mary Michael would churn out a couple hundred copies of a memo on the 'Mimeograph' (sp?) machine!
I remember the mimeograph machine…they still had those in use in the 1980s when I was in grade school.
The school secretary was named Ms. Smoley, and if you walked by the office in the middle of the day she was hard at working cranking out copies of tests and things on the mimeograph machines.
The kids would call out to her, “Holy moley, Ms. Smoley! You sure are cranking out the papers!”.
For some reason that was the most hilarious thing in the world to say in 1985.
I think another holdup against just using attachments is the threat of a computer virus. Some places would rather just keep with the old technology so they do not have to spend money on more robust computer security.
On that note, I'm sure they still have emails in the office that can receive attachments… making them still vulnerable to an attack and invalidating my entire argument…
It's the same a lot of places for a lot of things, which baffles me since I grew up using computers and have never owned a fax machine (Fax Zero has also been my friend for those few times when they won't accept a PDF). Luckily, I just filed for unemployment in Ohio and the system was automated online (though they still felt compelled to physically mail me the documents as well). But some of my coworkers from Michigan who were laid off at the same time are dealing with the same archaic system – I tried to help them file, and the website is completely outdated and they do all contact via phone or physically going into the office.
From my limited experience, I agree – state governments are totally outdated in some areas. Local governments are probably more hit or miss – I would expect more affluent areas would have better websites and online services.
I work at a funeral home in Michigan. We fax several times a day, all papers that need the written signature, not an electronic one.
Couldn’t those papers be scanned into PDF form and emailed?
All I can think of when I hear a story like this is just how much of a catastrophe Obamacare would end up being. Nothing like the gov. to make things already aggravating to insanity. Every now and again I have to fax papers usually it something I sign and have to send back right away, which for me is much easier than scanning a emailing.
Your friend needs to hand deliver her unemployment appeals information. I wouldn't send anything through fax or email when it comes to state government or federal for that matter. I suggest you tell your friend to take herself to the IDES office.
Scherie —
Get this, you are not allowed to take this stuff in person. You can’t drop things off.
When you get to the IDES office, everyone there is nasty and angry first off — they are incredibly rude, everyone, who works there.
You cannot drop papers off. The security person there screams at you to fill out a green slip of paper with what you want and drop it in this little box up front. You are not allowed to just drop your papers off in the box. Then you must wait for someone to pull your green slip out of the box and look at what you wanted and call you to the front. This could take hours.
When you are called to the front, the angry and nasty person who works there tells you that you need to fax the documents or mail them, that nothing is accepted at the front hand delivered.
Althea and her sister tried doing this and the above is what happened. That’s when they asked for my help in dealing with this stuff, because Althea wanted to strangle someone at the IDES office after being put through that.
I see fax machines used all the time in healthcare.
Hi –
Never posted here before. I live in Canada, am a registered nurse. I used to work for a home care agency, and all our documents were faxed, not emailed. I was told the reason was security. A phone line is maybe more secure? Emails can get intercepted, hacked, etc. I don't know, but that's what I was told.
hospitals are still overly dependent on fax machines
I've never posted here either but I couldn't resist the Tab comment because, believe it or not, recently a woman in New Orleans walked up to a bar with a Tab in her hand and placed it on the bar and proceeded to order some complicated drink and the bartender asked her where she got the Tab and she answered calmly, "At the store," which said precisely nothing. Love your writing, I'm addicted to it.
I work for the federal government, and several agencies that you would want to be a bit more technologically advanced still refuse to communicate on any way other than a fax machine….