You've Got Mail

I get about a hundred emails a day.  By some people’s standards, that’s nothing.  For some others, that’s more than they get in a year.  There have been times in my working life when I’ve received over 200 each day, so by all accounts, the hundred or so (give or take) that I get now are decidedly manageable.  I am infinitely thankful that I have a blackberry with a keyboard, because as the lady in the blackberry commercial says, I can’t imagine doing all those emails on a touch screen.

Since email became a common tool at work, I’ve received somewhere between 500 and 1000 emails each week, so I feel moderately qualified to comment on the quality of emails, and the seeming lack of care that some people exhibit when they hit send in the midst of a communicative frenzy.  

Sometimes my blackberry just can't handle the communication frenzy

I am continually amazed and delighted when an email has a beginning, middle, and end.  Even in a short email, would it kill people to greet you, identify their concern or ask their question, and finally, thank you or at least close the email.   If I see one more email that simply says ‘Please send me the reports’, or ‘See me about the whatever’ there is a good chance that I’m going to crack.  When was the last time you called someone and just said, “send me the reports” and hung up.  No hello, no good bye, no please, no thank you?  If you did that, people would think you were an ignorant bastard.   Email was supposed to make things more efficient, but it wasn’t supposed to make us rude.  

Do we really need a reminder?

I’m not sure I always, always, do it, but I do try to start my emails with a hello.  I try to throw in an appropriately placed please and thank you, and I most often end with something resembling a sign-off.  Not a Hill Street Blues kind of sign off, “Now go out there and do it them before they do it to you…”, but something like Thanks, or Regards, or even my more common, S.

  

"Go do it to them before they do it to us."  A good sign off.  Not necessarily appropriate for an email, but he knew how to close.

Many people have taken to saying ‘Cheers’.  If I’m truthful, I’m not sure how I feel about ‘cheers’.  That is unless I have a glass of red wine in my hand.  Waiters have been saying it for years, and every time someone ends an email with it, I think of a waiter at the Keg.  Don’t get me wrong, it’s so much better than nothing, but I just couldn’t pull it off.  I think it takes a special kind of person to get away with ‘cheers’.

Cheers.  Click here to see some favourite lines from Norm

In addition to giving people the right to be rude and short, email also seems to have given people the idea that spelling and grammar are optional.  I have this argument with my darling middle daughter all the time, and I always come out on the side that spelling actually counts.  I was talking to her in the car today, and again, right or wrong, I informed her that I really do make judgments based on spelling and grammar.  Maybe I should have been a teacher.

'Nuf Said.  Right?

Some people have now taken to adding a tag-line to their emails that reads something like, “Pardon the spelling, I sent this from my iPhone.”  Basically that’s like saying that, “Even though I’m using really expensive technology, I’m so busy with other things, that hitting the right keys, or using spell check just isn’t an option, so deal with it.”  I know that every major email program (especially the two most common corporate platforms) have spell checkers that can automatically check for spelling mistakes when you hit send.  I also know that you can set it up to automatically occur.  (Every time I write about spelling and grammar I’m convinced that I’m going to get busted with errors, so bust-away.)  Both my wife and a close friend have this ongoing battle with autocorrect.  It results in some pretty funny emails and texts.  You know you can shut that off, right?

Come on...jsut sya yse.  Err, Just Say Yes.  Use that spell checker.

With the prolific use of texting, both in personal and corporate life, what exactly is the appropriate use of texting short-forms and text icons?  I can’t tell you many times I’ve started a work email with How r u?  As I proof-read it before I hit send (another lost art), I kick myself and fix it right away.  I just can’t bring myself to send it.  Sup?  That’s another one.  I get the appeal…it’s quick, and it’s familiar.   I have been known to throw in the odd smiley here and there.  :o)

Is it now OK to use an emoticon in a business email or text? 

My guess is that the Generation Z people who will enter the workforce will turn the place on its head, and effectively introduce a completely new language to the old-fogeys like me who still actually have a dictionary in their office.  I’m not sure why I have it, I haven’t actually consulted it for about 10 years, but there’s something about it that makes me feel, um, superior?  I hope it’s not that.  I’m positive my daughters don’t even know what the dictionary is for.  Between auto-correct, and spell check (when they choose to use it), they see absolutely no use for it.

Come on, Dad, speling isn't impotent.

Email, smart-devices, and wi-fi have turned us into a society that expects instantaneous responses.  I’m possibly the worst person I know when it comes to responding immediately, and expecting immediate responses.  I work very hard to convince the people in my work-life that I just because I send emails and respond to messages at all hours of the day and night that I don’t have that expectation of them, but again if I got shot up with truth serum, or hooked up to a lie-detector, it would probably become clear that if I send somebody a message that requires a response, that I’m looking for that response until I get it.  (If we work together, please don’t think that this means you need to start responding on weekends and in the evening…this is my problem, not yours.)

Tick Tock...why haven't you responded to me yet?

Speaking of speedy responses, how many times have you banged out a response and hit send, just to realize that you’ve made an awful mistake and copied somebody on an email that they absolutely shouldn’t see?  I have on at least one unfortunate occasion said something fairly untoward about someone (not rude, just direct) and didn’t realize that they were copied on that email.  Imagine the uncomfortableness of our next face-to-face encounter.   To his credit, he had both a sense of humour and a forgiving nature.

Ooops...talk about embarrassed.

I am sure that the pace of business and its efficiency has improved with the introduction of email and the devices we use to support it.  What I’m not sure of is whether it’s actually made us better.  I’m convinced that we hide behind it (I know I’ve been guilty of it) when we have to say something unpleasant or uncomfortable.  I know we use it instead of getting out of our chairs, or imagine, dialing the phone (guilty again).  Most of all, I know we use it to cover our asses.  Why else would they have invented the BCC (blind carbon copy).   It’s funny that we still use the term carbon copy, since a) I’m not sure you can still buy carbon paper for making copies, and b) that nobody under the age of 40 probably even knows what a carbon copy is.

OK kids, this is carbon paper...press hard, you're making three copies

It’s my personal mission to try to talk instead of type when I can.  It’s my goal to haul my ass up out of my chair and walk to the next office, or down the hall when it makes sense to do it.  The sad part is that when I do it, most often the people I’m calling or visiting ask me to send them an email to confirm what we’ve spoken about.  

Cheers, 

S.