No, you are not excused

Today I received an email from a colleague with this "disclaimer" at the bottom:

Please excuse any typos as this was sent from my blackberry

Apparently the standard (and sickeningly promotional) "Sent from my BlackBerry Hurricane-or-whatever-its-called" is not enough anymore. Now we must make excuses for our inability to take correspondence seriously, and our impatience that leads us to send emails from our phones rather that waiting until we are at a computer and in a good position to communicate.

Of course, I know smart phones aren't all bad. We live in a fast paced world. Sometimes you really need to close that deal before noon, and your phone is the only communication device you've got on hand. Smart phones help businesses run smoothly and keep us in touch with people we otherwise wouldn't be able to get a hold of, and I'm all for that.

What makes me angry is that I'm being asked to excuse your behavior, when you really have no right to demand that of me. If the disclaimer had said, "Sent from my thingamajigger; may contain typos," I'd be okay with that. You're simply warning me. But to take it one step further and ask me to to go ahead and overlook the fact that I'm not important enough for you to spell-check or use proper punctuation, well that's going too far.

What's next? "Please excuse my use of annoying abbreviations?" Or "Please excuse the fact that I can't take enough time to actually type out a complete sentence?" Maybe just a blank email with "Please excuse this email, as something in my bag hit the send button accidentally and I don't actually have anything to say to you."

Oh to live back in the day when people wrote long, emotion-filled letters to each other. Now that's correspondence.