Email Pet Peeves

Maybe I'm just irritable today (a nice way of saying bitchy, although bitchy sounds more entitled), so let's just go with that and we'll go over my email pet peeves. You can read while I go get some chocolate and a glass of wine. Please stop poking your head in my office and asking, “Did you get my email?”. Unless you are having some difficulty with your emails going through, this is almost as unnecessary as Vanilla Ice Greatest Hits CD. “Did you read my email?” is perhaps the question you should be asking. There is no need to cc me on something that is not of any consequence to me. I really don’t care. In the same vein, if I hand off an email assignment to you, please do not cc me on the email assignment. This is called delegating. You don’t have to prove to me you did it. For God’s sake, clean up your email before forwarding. I don’t need to see the four thousand people on the previous list of recipients. I probably won’t even make the effort to scroll that far down. The same applies to a message that has an attachment that leads to an attachment that leads to an attachment. It’s like a Russian nesting doll and I can promise you I won’t even open it up. You really don’t need to think up a clever closing line for business email. ‘Thanks’ is ok when appropriate. ‘Best’ doesn’t bother me, but when you get too cutesy like ‘Enjoy your day!!!’ it makes me throw up a little bit in my mouth. And ‘Cheers’ shouldn’t be used unless you are European or Australian. To be honest, it makes me jealous because I think you are drinking on the job and I’m not. I want to sign off with ‘Rock on’, but I don’t do it on my business email. Well, not too often. Learn the difference between ‘Reply’ and ‘Reply All’. I don’t care to hear back from you if I don’t know who you are. In a business environment, please do not answer an email question that I have sent you with a phone call. (Unless, of course, it’s just too long of an explanation to type out). I don’t have time to talk to you and I probably need your answer in writing. I know you’re excited to be at work!!!! Please don’t flaunt it!!! Enough said? If you have a question for me, ask it. Don’t state an issue/problem out and then say ‘Please Advise’. If you want a specific answer, learn to ask a specific question. It’s like when my kids say ‘I’m hungry’. I answer with ‘That’s too bad’. What I want to hear is ‘Can I have a snack?’, ‘When is dinner?’, ‘Are there any apples in the fruit bowl?’. I may seem clairvoyant, but this is just a complete waste of my powers. Likewise, please don’t forward a back and forth email conversation between you and another person and expect me to read it and figure out what you want. If you are that lazy, I wonder how you even get out of bed and get to work. Stay Gold, Jana