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!

I am The Boss of the house!

I was enlightened by the supreme wisdom of the Lord the other day when I accidentally landed upon a brilliant saying that went ‘My wife allows me to say that I am the Boss of the house!’ If you are laughing at the deep insight that this quote offers, you are either the man who has been through this (even if it is not literally!!) or the woman who is possessed with the ultimate authority over her husband and proudly acclaims the same!! If you are none of the above, pardon me for saying that you are possessed with a ruthless mind that makes fun of the agony that married men go through!

Coming back to the point of the quote, it drives home the essence of the lives of married men that no matter how authoritative you are outside your home, it’s the woman who rules the roost at home! The reason simply being that she is the one with the unfathomable mind! This reminds me of a parable about an old sage who was once asked by one of his followers “Oh Master, how should I to lead a life that brings lasting happiness to my better half, my soul mate?” The sage nodded as if in deep thought, then looked up to the disciple and uttered just one line: “If I had known the answer to this eternal question, do you think I would have been in this place today?”

The story does not end here; some proclaim that even God has never got a complete insight into the mind of the woman though he was the one who created her. It’s said that after He created the World, He rested. Thereafter, He created man and then rested again. But the turning point in even God’s life came when He created the woman. After that neither God, nor man rested!! (Some intelligent dude furthered this story by adding that God was smart enough to create ‘Shopping’ after this so that both He and man could get some rest!!)

So my dear folks, the assured way to be happy is to let your wife be the boss (and it’s not as if she isn’t already!). If she is kind enough, she will allow you to say that ‘You’ are the boss and you can enjoy this liberty as long as you keep her happy. And now if you ask me how to keep her happy, I have another secret coming your way. I shall reveal the same to you for the benefit of mankind and it goes thus: ‘To keep a woman happy, you must love her a lot and never ever try to understand her’. An off-the-track suggestion for the woman out there “To keep a man happy, you must love him little but understand a lot.”