You've Got Mail!

"Diamonds are forever.  Email comes close.”

                                 June Kronholz; journalist.

This year I took the day before the Labor Day holiday weekend off; ostensibly a slow day.  When I got back to work the following Tuesday I opened my mailbox to find 73 emails.  Seventy three!!  Would that I could be so popular at Christmastime with an equally bulging snail mail box of cards; or maybe not.  Like most I’ve found email to be both help and hindrance and no this isn’t the Luddite in me speaking. 

The boons are obvious.  Email is a great way to transmit a binding document, a quick message, directions of all sorts and the summary of a conversation or meeting.  Some of the disadvantages are equally clear but just for fun, let’s talk about them.

        Of the 73 emails I received on that particular Tuesday, I would guess that more than 20 percent were unnecessary misplaced etiquette messages.  I know, I know, our moms tried to teach us manners when we were kids but do all five correspondents in a multi-message laden thread have to close out the thread with “thank you?”  I’ll give you an etiquette pass if you’ll spare me the extra messages. Thank you. 

      There are the “I’m telling on you” emails.  Ever forget to do something or complete something late or make a mistake and have a co-worker send you a friendly reminder?  I’m not perfect and appreciate a reminder or notification of an impending problem.  I’m not quite sure that I appreciate it so much when just about every manager in the company is copied.  Sometimes that initial email includes only one manager.  A response is sent and in reprisal another manager is copied.  Then the managers start to get involved and they copy other managers.  By the fifth or so email it’s become a finger pointing fest and a simple thread has turned into a big ugly tangle.  What could have been accomplished between the two original parties has become a corporate controversy. 

     “I’m telling on you” emails often have offspring called “dredging history” emails.  These are usually sent by a high mucky-muck who decides he needs to know the minutiae of the just unfolded drama and so a half day or so is taken up scouring archives and collecting numerous emails which become an “I’ve got to cover my ass” file (see below for more on this).  The “I’m telling on you emails” have a couple of close cousins; the “I’m going to get you fired” emails and the “I’ve got to cover my ass so I don’t get fired” emails.  These relations usually are more in the form of email files than just single emails.  I don’t get involved in the former but unfortunately I keep massive files of the latter in the event that I have a vindictive colleague who does keep “I’m going to get you fired” files.  It’s a sad state of affairs when we find ourselves wasting time and productivity to keep files of evidence to counter files of evidence.
      The "dredging history" email has another parent.  It's called the "I'm your boss and I'm so lazy I can impulsively launch an order for you to do busy work" email.  I wish I had a penny for every email requesting some tidbit of information or file from a shared drive that he or she could easily find if it wasn't for sheer laziness; or stupidity. It doesn't take long to realize that often times the "I'm your boss etc." email is related in some way to your supervisor's own "covering my ass" file.

     “We’re not talking.”  There’s nothing like Outlook for stifling good old fashioned communication and chilling an already cold relationship.  I once worked in an office where two co-workers didn’t much like each other.  Much of the communication between the two was by email.  I suppose that’s fine as far as it goes but it didn’t go much beyond two feet which was about the distance that separated the two.  They literally worked back to back with no partition separating them save hard feelings.
      One message I've often used is the "toss the grenade and run like hell" email.  Ever receive that bit of bad news that's going to really piss someone off or ignite a corporate firestorm once its been relayed?  I have and many are the times that I've held that news until it's time to close up shop for the day.  My last task of the day, after closing every window in my computer except Outlook is to launch that fateful email that will most certainly spawn a series of emails and phone calls, then log off, ignore the ringing phone and get the hell out of Dodge. The hope is that overnight I'll either win the lottery or by morning cooler heads will prevail.

     There’s the “shoot first and aim later” email.  It’s Friday afternoon at the end of a long, hard week and your boss has been riding you like an Army mule.  You email your wife, “Let’s go out for a few drinks tonight and then we’ll go home and you can put on that sheer nighty and those thigh high boots.  Hell maybe we can get the neighbor’s to join us.  I’ve always wanted to try that group stuff.  I just need to forget that butt head boss of mine.”  You quickly go to your contacts list, land the mouse pointer on a name and launch the email.  Oh but your wife and boss are one below the other in the address window and in your haste you aren’t quite sure who you emailed.  You take a big gulp, go to the send list and you find that yes, you just invited your boss out for drinks and group sex, not to mention that little butt head remark.  Far fetched you say?  A former, and let me stress FORMER, Golden State Warriors executive would disagree.  A few years back he fired off an email called, “Ghetto Prom” to the team’s entire media distribution list.  Yep, there’s no reason why you should send a racially charged "joke" email to only one person who might forward it to the press when you can do what this fellow did; just cut out the middle man by sending it directly to every reporter, columnist, editor, TV and radio station that has a relationship with the team.  The ultimate irony is the fired executive was the public relations manager.      

     And then there are the “I guess I thought it was a good idea at the time” emails.  The most famous are sent by politicians like Anthony Weiner and Louis Magazzu.  You know the one where a middle aged fellow has attached a photo of himself wearing only a smile?  That email along with the incriminating picture of the big belly hovering over a little, uhhh, you know, often becomes part of an “I’m going to get you fired” file.  This is just the kind of correspondence that begs for snail mail.  It gives the sender those extra moments of pause to consider that photo while sealing the envelope, applying the stamp and walking it to the mailbox; “Hmm, maybe I don’t look like those guys in the Roman statues,” or “Gee, what would happen to my career if this got lost and fell into the wrong hands.”

But with all the negativity there are the emails from those nice people in faraway countries like Nigeria or Taiwan who’ve found themselves faced with hard times.  Usually these emails come from an exiled prince or a businessman who was betrayed by a colleague (maybe he was a victim of an “I’m going to get you fired” file) and they have big bank accounts that for some unjust reason have been frozen.  These generous folks will find it in their hearts to award you a big percentage of their fortunes if only you’ll help them unfreeze those assets.  Usually they only ask for a small payment to help grease the bureaucratic skids and a dozen or so forms of your I.D.  I’m still waiting for the couple mil that big-hearted Nigerian prince owes me.  Only thing is I’ll have to open a new bank account as the one I sent him that check from has somehow been drained.