Corporate Email Antics

As official as it may sound, corporate emailing is far from being ‘official’ many a times, and becomes a rather unofficial way of getting back at colleagues. Whether someone wants to dodge a particular job assigned to them or settle scores with a particularly nasty colleague, corporate email shows them the way. It’s amusing how much the human mind can evolve to uncover newer and newer methods of such not-so-pleasant tactics that people are often at the giving (or receiving) end of.

Starts off as an ‘FYI’ from the queen-of-lazy-ones who practically dozes off at her desk all the time in your neighboring cubicle. You realize only too late that you got into this loop of a hundred FYI messages simply because this lady found the task assigned to her very un-cool and intended to bat it straight to you. Alas, the boss comes over to ‘you’ and questions you about the task that you are blissfully unaware of, while this lucky lady sips away her cappuccino during the tea break. And what do you do? Sport that Ohh-I-didn’t-know-at-all look only to be fired for being so irresponsible about your duties. You realize your fault too late: Being dumb enough not to pass on the FYI to your next in-line.

Marking CC and BCC is another repulsive trend – don’t ask me who started this trend but I’m still hunting for that person even today… he will become history the day I lay my hands on him! People who don’t work need something to make noise about – probably to show they are on the ball of something important and their easiest tactic is to mark a CC to the boss for every trifling email. Phew… don’t even know how to deal with such people… Can Microsoft Office kindly provide some valuable help?

And the last of the kin are those who have ample of time and energy to write mails for anything and everything (obviously unimportant ones!) in the world. So they will mark a reply-all every time asking for the stupidest bit of information over and over till you fall dead replying to them. Tring tring – do these people know there’s a telephone at their desk that they can pick up and ask their query and get it solved in a jiffy?

Well these super-beings are not the last ones actually – there are multitudes of them out there, but for now, these are all I can spare time to talk about… I just received an FYI with a CC marked to the boss and obviously I am to action it… soonest!