Can't satisfy some people

I had a message on my voice mail this morning from a woman unhappy that the polls weren't open at 7 a.m. for the last day of early voting. She'd wandered around the courthouse looking for an open door and said she was late to work as a result. I returned her call and pointed out that the polls weren't scheduled to be open until 8 a.m.

She asked when that had been in the paper, and I told her I'd had it in at least two stories, and the election office had taken out at least one ad announcing the schedule. She then said she didn't take the newspaper. She'd assumed that because the TV stations reported that Nashville's polls opened at 7 a.m., ours did too.

She then told me she'd called Shelbyville Mayor Wallace Cartwright and given him an earful about the election schedule. I told her that the election office was part of the county, not the city, and Mayor Cartwright wasn't in any way to blame for its schedule.

"That's just typical of this town," she said. "Nobody knows what's going on."

I gently suggested that might be a good reason to subscribe to the newspaper, but she said she couldn't afford it. Of course, she still expects us to be here to take her calls....