I'd meant to post this earlier but been busy and forgot.

Ok I work for local government, small small town, no infrastructure to speak of. Many residents are poor (poor by choice but anyway), most are elderly. Stuff happens around town, we need a way to alert them in case it's gonna affect them, like a big water leak that's killed water pressure for the whole town, or a tornado warning. Nearly all of them have cell phones now, so I set up an account on Twitter for the city, and put up fliers telling people how to subscribe. No Twitter account needed, no net access required. It's working perfectly, and everyone seems happy with being able to get updates on the fly.

Then last week, a woman came into my office and introduced herself as some mucky muck from FEMA, and told me they would be conducting some Homeland Security exercise just on the edge of town in the following month. As she's standing there, she spies one of my fliers on the front counter. Snatching it up and looking completely offended, she demands "What is THIS for?? Why are you doing THIS??" I told her the situation in town, and said it was our way of making sure no one was in the shower with a head full of shampoo when we went to shut the water off for repairs. "Well you don't need to do THIS! This is MY job!". Really, I asked, and you're going to what, call everyone in town? How do you propose to do that? Half of them won't even give ME their phone number. "Well they'll have to sign up for the service and then FEMA will be in charge of important notifications!" and by now she is red in the face and scowling at me. "Soooo, you're saying you're going to be responsible for sending out notices that so and so's dog is out of his backyard again and if anyone sees him, please call the ACO?" I could tell she wasn't expecting that, but you know, our government knows best! "YES, because that's MY job!" she snapped, and with that she snatched up ALL of my fliers and stomped out of the building.

OK, now I realize our government would like nothing more than to be our sole source of information, but that was beyond stupid… not to mention, did she really think I wouldn't print out more fliers? Idiot. Our tax dollars at work.