Yesterday's Dilbert comic made me chuckle to myself, and today's comic made me laugh out loud. They both addressed things I loathe in email communication.
The first is when the original message is removed from the response email. This bugs me because I like to save emails, but I don't want to have to save every email in the thread. I would rather be able to save the final email in the thread and have it contain all the communication. However, the bigger problem is when you get an email that has answers to questions, but you don't remember exactly what you asked in the original email.
Let's say you get this email:
Subject: RE: Tonight...Is this about the plans to meet your friend Gino at Benny's place before you go pick up your friend Tony on your way to a birthday party where you are bringing the knife to cut the cake? Or, is this in response that other thing you are planning?
Let's meet at Benny's before we go get Tony. I'll bring the knife.
Now, I realize that there are email systems out there that remove the initial message from the response1. Those email systems should be destroyed and not given a reason why. Maybe somehow we could send them a message like this with no original message attached.
RE: System UpdateI think that would be appropriate.
That's why we are decommissioning you.
I'll discuss today's comic later.
- ↩Wake County, could you please take some of my tax dollars and get a new flippin' email system. And, while you are at it, can you get someone to update your web server so you can serve wcpss.net with out me having to tack on www. to the front. Thanks.
Labels: blogosphere, humor, indiscriminate
posted by Shannon Smith @ 5/08/2007
6 Comments
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6 Comments:
What drives me CRAZY is when you send an email with a couple of questions in it -- nothing painfully long, just something like this:
"Hey, that sounds great. Just three quick thoughts:
1 - What can we bring?
2 - Is this something we should dress up for?
3 - What time does it start? "
and then you get a response like this:
"Try to come around 6..."
Ummm... OK. Yeah. You know what, just disregard those other questions...
I can think of one person in particular who is terrible about this.
'Course, I'm probably being really hypocritical, since I only answer about half of the emails that I ought to...
Loved the comics!
You know what bothers me when you send your boss and email asking him to consider sending you to teach the training workshops on the database you spend every day working with.
First of all it takes a lot of guts to write that email, but secondly I know he will never bring the subject up again except to tell me to train someone who knows nothing about the database so they can go travel and train people, so that in return I get tons of emails and phone calls about troubleshooting.
. . . email etiquette . . . government employees have none!
1. I thought the comics were funny as well. Is it bad that I read them every day?
2. I agree that the thread should remain intact especially with my memory being what it is.
3. Way to stick it to the Wake County Public School System. It should be a crime to have to tag on the "www."
4. Great post.
as a wcpss employee...you can select "reply to sender with history" and it does keep the previous post but it is an extra step and it doesn't do it automatically..so most of the time folks don't do it or don't remember to select that option :-) (I know I always don't) Mandy
Yes I posted on your blog!!!
Mandy took my comment!! Dang it. Well, there you go Shannon. That's all I had to say. :)
Zack, I usually go with...
1) Answer one.
2) Answer two.
3) Answer three.
If they number the questions, I number the answers.
Maybe we should all come together and write a book on preferred email usage.
Megan, They probably don't want to send you off to do training because they know that it would take away from your internet surfing/blog reading/fund raising. They are just looking out for you.
Jeramie, Thanks. You're the man.
WCPSS Employees,
It sounds like they need to simplify the system. The extra option is unnecessary. I still am willing to donate my tax dollars to the cause.
Thanks to all for the comments.
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