Finally, here’s the official part two of the email.  Employee 505 made an attempt… and it was just that… an *attempt*.  So what’s in store for part 2? More annoying types of email, and they seem to be more frequent around the holidays.  With the American Thanksgiving holiday coming up (yay for some vacation time), I am seeing more and more of these types of mail, probably due to people attempting to delegate as much work as possible during the holidays.  Ideally things are supposed to slow down during this time of year, and they do… if you take some time off….or you quit… or if you get fired, then things get reeeal slow. Personally I don’t think I can afford to quit, although if I could, that’d be sweet.  No, instead I’m day to day peon who goes to work…sniff…  

What annoys me during the holidays is that on Friday afternoons we always seem to get some supposedly “high priority” issue that needs to be resolved that day.  Of course, when we ask questions regarding the issue, those people are nowhere to be found! Where are they? They are gone, perhaps heading home thinking that the situation is now very well handled and on its way to be completed.  Fuck that, they can feel the burn the following Monday when they find out we aren’t staying late to accommodate them. Seriously, if something is that urgent, warn people AHEAD OF TIME.

These are the types of email that I’ve tagged this time around… I’m sure we’ve all seen them.

High Priority emails.  Just like I was saying, managers and they high priority emails.  More often than not, it’s the last thing from high priority. I think it’s more accurate to say: “Hey this needs to be done because my manager asked me status on it!!!! DO IT NOW!”  And with any luck, the manager suffers from a panic attack and needs to take some sedatives.  That gives you a couple hours of peace anyway.

Email flagging.  What’s the point? I actually thought this could be useful… until I figured that I have 50 or so emails flagged, some of them old and decrepit. Yeah, it’s my fault for just leaving ‘em there, but the point is, what are they good for exactly? Mail searches are pretty efficient nowadays, and pretty easy to find what you need, or at least I think it’s pretty easy.  Has anyone had any difficulties?

Read receipts.  EVIL. I hate these things. This is basically like having something make sure you have read the email.  You know those people nag you to do things? Yeah, it’s just like *those* people.  Read receipts should be banned. Evil I tell you!

The art of “pinging”. This is a term I have grown to see being used more frequently.  When you send an email, and that person hasn’t responded for a long period of time, you send a follow-up email saying “ping” to get the person’s attention. Maybe the person is ignoring you on purpose; maybe they didn’t see your email the first time, maybe they just don’t care…who knows.  I consider it spam personally.  It’s annoying to see these email threads that have just the word “ping” in it.  If people don’t respond… call ‘em, stop by their office, do anything but spam.  Spam is bad.