It's easy to point fingers at the emails of others, index fingers or otherwise. However, I can hardly claim to have not spambushed others: let he who is without sin send the first email. Bearing this in mind, I've written a guide to sending emails. I appreciate that you emailing this post to others would not be without irony and encouraging that would only make me a hypocrite. I can't bear to think of myself as an "ironic hypocrite" so I'll contract it and think of myself as an "iron hippo" instead.
"Spambush" by the brilliant Sam Szulc.
When sending an email, be aware that anyone could read it and it can be saved, so bitch about your colleagues by phone. If you're going to say anything risqué, check who you send the email to more times than you check the content. Nothing is worse than sending an early draft of the Workforced manuscript to a co-worker by accident several years ago. Luckily I didn't do that.
Opening oneself to blackmail can really hold back a career, especially when you've written your name and a copyright sign on every page. Luckily I didn't do that either. Of course, should such a document ever circulate around the office, the anecdote of how you got fired will provide excellent marketing material, fingers crossed.
The next rule is to veer towards professionalism. This morning I received an email that began with "Hi Gang!" This morning I deleted an email that began with "Hi Gang!" Too many exclamation marks in emails are the literary equivalent of walking round the office with a big clown wig. Turning everything into an exclamation is a bit too keen, the kind of "born again" keen that scares me. One trip down the birth canal was trauma enough. Observe the difference:
1. "Good morning," at the start of an email is courteous and professional.
2. "Good morning!" suggests you are genuinely happy to have gotten out of bed and made it into the office on time.
Furthermore, no "smileys" and no alpha-numeric abbreviations like "2 U" or "4 U." What if Shakespeare had used smileys and such abbreviations?
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2 B or not 2 B, that's the ? |
If you send emails like this, next time you're sitting at your workstation, please shoot yourself with a silencer so everyone else can sleep.
As if the body of the email was not enough, you have to contend with attachments too. I have lost track of the number of emails asking me to look at the attachment that don't have one. They're always followed by the "Sorry, here it is" email. But who's to say getting the attachment is any better than not getting it? Who hasn't opened an attachment and then tried to close it faster than a rollerskating cheetah? I'm amazed what people send me at work. But do I delete it? No, clearly I must forward it to other people in the office so they can be equally shocked.
Still, I would much rather receive tasteless jokes than the occasional attachment from the lazy manager who has just scanned his or her hand-written notes. Either your handwriting is illegible or a dyspraxic squid has thrashed across the page spraying out squid ink in a last-ditch effort to find its way back to the ocean.
Email titles deserve attention. There was an unfortunate incident with the fresh-faced young man who was brought in to install Windows NT on the network server; he was known as "NT boy." That's not an email you want to click reply to. Ah, the poor "Re: NT boy." Other email titles you may consider:
- Re: Re: Re: Your boat, gently down the stream.
- Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Respect. Just a little bit.
- Re: Re: Wind, when the crowd say "Bo!" selectah (if the cultural reference is lost on you, click here).
One of the best features of office emails is the standard confidentiality signature at the bottom that no one ever reads. I like to tweak mine:
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The information contained in this e-mail (including attachments) is only for the personal and confidential use of the sender and recipient named above. If the reader is not the intended recipient, you are notified that you have received this message in error and that any review, dissemination, copying or distribution is prohibited. I think a penguin would beat a meercat in a fight. If you have received this communication in error, please notify the sender immediately by e-mail and delete or destroy the original message and all copies. Thank you. |
The same shenanigans can be had with the automatic reply when someone is out of the office:
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I will be away from my desk between October 14th and October 18th, returning on October 21st. I will respond to your email upon my return. In the meantime please address any urgent matters to one of my colleagues, except Dave. |
Until next time,
Don "Iron Hippo" Joe
Don Joe is the author behind the hilarious office comedy blog Workforced. For more of his writing you can check out www.workforced.com.