The love/hate relationship of email
September 5th 2008 10:04
Email. My first love, and quite possibly the best invention ever, inclusive of when Mr Hershey figured out how to put peanut butter and chocolate together.
Email really kicked off when I first started working, and even though the software we were equipped with was clumsy and unsophisticated, I knew I found my communication tool of choice.
People assume that journalists enjoy talking to people. I don't. I admit it. Mostly people shit me up the wall. And when you say you're a journalist they always have a story... My late partner was a psychologist, so would always have people bemoaning their lives to him. All well and good, but he was an educational pyschologist, so an expert in IQ testing and behaviour management. However, I digress - email.
Why does email get the thumbs up from me? Because it allows me an almost perfect stream of consciousness voice with no interruptions. I'd say it was almost Samuel Beckettish, but it's probably more homeless bloke on the street corner who shouts profanity at passers-by in reality.
Professionally, email is my preferred communication tool because I can be guaranteed that I have told my staff exactly what to do and how to do it, so that there can be no confusion. In theory. This obviously fails sometimes, because there are a lot of thick people in the world.
So, the impetus behind this current soap box comes down to an incident a few days ago. I have a friend, and we have a friend in common. The friend in common is hooked up with a lad who has all the personality of gum. And not even interesting gum like pop rocks, just standard gum. So I had emailed my friend, banging on as you do, and had made mention of our mutual friend and her simpleton beau in my message. Unbeknownst to me, my friend was checking her email in the company of our mutual friend, so now mutual friend is fully aware of my disdain for the lad. To be fair, I shouldn't have done it. It was slack. Who she chooses to grow bored and old with is her business. But by the same token,WTF was my friend doing opening a message almost guaranteed to not be fit for other eyes in public?!
Sadly, it's not the first time I've been well and truly busted on email.
The first time took place when my partner sent me a message with an attachment, and this was during the time when microsoft outlook had yet to work out how to embedd attachments, so I replied, but not to his message, to the attachment which meant my comments went directly to the actual source of the attachment.
Upon reflection, I can see why the head of legal services of an australian university probably wasn't the best person to send a fairly personal/intimate message to, albeit in error. Especially when my partner was in tight negotiations for a research grant and was meeting with the misdirected email recipient quite regularly. Oh well, you only do it once, right?
You'd think, wouldn't you?
The next tale of woe still makes me laugh. I come out as a venemous and foul wench, but am prepared to accept that as fact.
When I returned to Sydney last year, after travelling through Canada and a bit of the US for a month, I landed and went to work the next day, following a 26 hour flight from Toronto.
In fairness, I landed, had a boozy lunch with various mates, went out drinking with others, staggered home about 1am, pushed my luggage off my bed and went to work the next day.
Got into work to discover the temp backfilling my position still in my office. I was hung over, jet lagged and generally not happy to be back, so did what needed to be done and told her to move. She faffed about for 4 hours, while I became more increasingly impatient, and so I helped her move by picking up her stuff and taking it from my office. When she was finally gone, I booted up my desk top, rang the IT crew and got them to reinstate my user details, logged into my exchange server and began the process of downloading 18 months worth of emails.
Obviously then I also emailed mates to let them know I was back in Aus and back on line.
It is at this point that things begin to go pear shaped.
One mate (who had visited me in London) emailed me immediately and we launched into a fairly inappropriate convo reliving our adventures, and also slagging off my boss and the temp who had backfilled my job.
Another mate emailed me and asked me what was new.
I replied to him saying that my boss had gotten fatter.
He replied, laughing, asking how that was possible.
I replied, suggesting that funds had been misdirected and she had a deep frier in her office.
And then the convo got bad.
Both convos eventually merged into one, and it was pretty much hunting season on my fat and incompetent boss and her useless friend, the temp. But soon enough we all tired of it and I went home to unpack/wash and generally get some well needed sleep.
About 3am I woke up. A little bit from jet lag, but mostly from the spine tingling realisation that while I was away I had put on an autoforward for all messages to my boss. And in my hungover/jet lagged state had not taken it off. By my calculations, she would come into work that morning and be able to read approximately 40 messages sent over a one hour period calling her a morbidly obese teletubby who likes to deep fry paper and eat it, as well as messages slating the temp beyond scope.
As the cold dawning of fear started to settle into me, I realised that, from a legal perspective anyway, nothing that had been said was defamatory. The woman is fat. No one would look at her and say "what a lithe creature." People would look at her and say "back away from the fork." So, while the content was not complimentary it was not slanderous. Yes, I came off as a complete wench, but... so be it.
With that rationalised, I got a few more hours sleep and still hightailed it into work about 7am. I reasoned that I could probably break into her inbox and delete the messages but by the time I got in (seriously about 7am) she and her EA were already at work. I arrived to my office to see her EA waving me away and mouthing "abort mission, abort mission".
Dammit.
So I sat at my desk, took off the auto forward immediately and got on with actual work stuff. After about an hour she waddled into my office and simply asked me "did you know your auto forward is still on?" To which I responded "yep, realised that this morning."
And then she waddled away.
Nothing more was said, nothing more was done, but she did start eating a lot more salad.
So the lesson to be learned from this tale? I'm clearly not that bright and only ever slag off your boss/colleagues using your personal email account!
Email really kicked off when I first started working, and even though the software we were equipped with was clumsy and unsophisticated, I knew I found my communication tool of choice.
People assume that journalists enjoy talking to people. I don't. I admit it. Mostly people shit me up the wall. And when you say you're a journalist they always have a story... My late partner was a psychologist, so would always have people bemoaning their lives to him. All well and good, but he was an educational pyschologist, so an expert in IQ testing and behaviour management. However, I digress - email.
Why does email get the thumbs up from me? Because it allows me an almost perfect stream of consciousness voice with no interruptions. I'd say it was almost Samuel Beckettish, but it's probably more homeless bloke on the street corner who shouts profanity at passers-by in reality.
Professionally, email is my preferred communication tool because I can be guaranteed that I have told my staff exactly what to do and how to do it, so that there can be no confusion. In theory. This obviously fails sometimes, because there are a lot of thick people in the world.
So, the impetus behind this current soap box comes down to an incident a few days ago. I have a friend, and we have a friend in common. The friend in common is hooked up with a lad who has all the personality of gum. And not even interesting gum like pop rocks, just standard gum. So I had emailed my friend, banging on as you do, and had made mention of our mutual friend and her simpleton beau in my message. Unbeknownst to me, my friend was checking her email in the company of our mutual friend, so now mutual friend is fully aware of my disdain for the lad. To be fair, I shouldn't have done it. It was slack. Who she chooses to grow bored and old with is her business. But by the same token,WTF was my friend doing opening a message almost guaranteed to not be fit for other eyes in public?!
Sadly, it's not the first time I've been well and truly busted on email.
The first time took place when my partner sent me a message with an attachment, and this was during the time when microsoft outlook had yet to work out how to embedd attachments, so I replied, but not to his message, to the attachment which meant my comments went directly to the actual source of the attachment.
Upon reflection, I can see why the head of legal services of an australian university probably wasn't the best person to send a fairly personal/intimate message to, albeit in error. Especially when my partner was in tight negotiations for a research grant and was meeting with the misdirected email recipient quite regularly. Oh well, you only do it once, right?
You'd think, wouldn't you?
The next tale of woe still makes me laugh. I come out as a venemous and foul wench, but am prepared to accept that as fact.
When I returned to Sydney last year, after travelling through Canada and a bit of the US for a month, I landed and went to work the next day, following a 26 hour flight from Toronto.
In fairness, I landed, had a boozy lunch with various mates, went out drinking with others, staggered home about 1am, pushed my luggage off my bed and went to work the next day.
Got into work to discover the temp backfilling my position still in my office. I was hung over, jet lagged and generally not happy to be back, so did what needed to be done and told her to move. She faffed about for 4 hours, while I became more increasingly impatient, and so I helped her move by picking up her stuff and taking it from my office. When she was finally gone, I booted up my desk top, rang the IT crew and got them to reinstate my user details, logged into my exchange server and began the process of downloading 18 months worth of emails.
Obviously then I also emailed mates to let them know I was back in Aus and back on line.
It is at this point that things begin to go pear shaped.
One mate (who had visited me in London) emailed me immediately and we launched into a fairly inappropriate convo reliving our adventures, and also slagging off my boss and the temp who had backfilled my job.
Another mate emailed me and asked me what was new.
I replied to him saying that my boss had gotten fatter.
He replied, laughing, asking how that was possible.
I replied, suggesting that funds had been misdirected and she had a deep frier in her office.
And then the convo got bad.
Both convos eventually merged into one, and it was pretty much hunting season on my fat and incompetent boss and her useless friend, the temp. But soon enough we all tired of it and I went home to unpack/wash and generally get some well needed sleep.
About 3am I woke up. A little bit from jet lag, but mostly from the spine tingling realisation that while I was away I had put on an autoforward for all messages to my boss. And in my hungover/jet lagged state had not taken it off. By my calculations, she would come into work that morning and be able to read approximately 40 messages sent over a one hour period calling her a morbidly obese teletubby who likes to deep fry paper and eat it, as well as messages slating the temp beyond scope.
As the cold dawning of fear started to settle into me, I realised that, from a legal perspective anyway, nothing that had been said was defamatory. The woman is fat. No one would look at her and say "what a lithe creature." People would look at her and say "back away from the fork." So, while the content was not complimentary it was not slanderous. Yes, I came off as a complete wench, but... so be it.
With that rationalised, I got a few more hours sleep and still hightailed it into work about 7am. I reasoned that I could probably break into her inbox and delete the messages but by the time I got in (seriously about 7am) she and her EA were already at work. I arrived to my office to see her EA waving me away and mouthing "abort mission, abort mission".
Dammit.
So I sat at my desk, took off the auto forward immediately and got on with actual work stuff. After about an hour she waddled into my office and simply asked me "did you know your auto forward is still on?" To which I responded "yep, realised that this morning."
And then she waddled away.
Nothing more was said, nothing more was done, but she did start eating a lot more salad.
So the lesson to be learned from this tale? I'm clearly not that bright and only ever slag off your boss/colleagues using your personal email account!
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Comment by JaneD
on There's no I in team - work horror
Yellow Brick Road
I bow down in deference.