Let me set a scene for you. You’re sitting in your cubicle plugging away at another non-descript day, taking care of some busy work, being productive, working in just enough mindless web browsing to stay sane and counting down the minutes until 5 PM (Okay, 4:30. Fine, 4:15. As long as it’s not Friday). Everything is going smoothly when you are interrupted by the gentle chime of an incoming e-mail. No worries, you think, it’s probably just this week’s edition of “News from Around the Company” or another mass mailing that you don’t need to be copied on.Or maybe it’s just a small request that requires a simple answer or even an assignment you’ll have to schedule time for in the next couple of days. So you click over to your e-mail, and that’s when you see it:
THE RED EXCLAMATION POINT OF DOOM~!
Yes, this message has been marked urgent. This message has been sent with (gasp!) HIGH IMPORTANCE. That’s right, someone on the far end of cyberspace has decided that this message is so important, so unavoidably urgent, that they just couldn’t avoid their e-mail getting lumped in with all the other e-mail of only piddling importance. It’s not so important, mind you, that they felt the need to pick up their phone and have an actual conversation (it’s not like anyone is ever away from their e-mail, anyway) but definitely important enough to mark with shiny red punctuation.
The e-mail usually goes something like this:
(Note: Credit for this e-mail goes to the creator of this blog.)
Now, I’m not under any delusions that what I do is hugely important in the grand scheme of things. As Old Guy likes to say when he’s catching heat about something, “We’re selling groceries, we’re not building bombs.” And he’s right. But somehow I get half a dozen “Urgent” e-mails a day. I’ve never in my life sent one, unless it was in an ironic attempt to make the point I’m making now. What does into the decision? Do people sit there, type out an e-mail, get ready to click send and think “you know what, I’m not sure my words convey the significance of this request, let me click this red punctuation mark here to really drive the point home. “ And is there anyone out there who reads an e-mail and thinks “I was going to drop this directly in my trash can, but look, it’s urgent, I better get on this right away.” I doubt that there is.
More often than not, what the red exclamation point really means is “I screwed up and I need this right away, but I don’t feel like picking up the phone and telling you I screwed up, so let’s use this fairly benign feature to convey my panic.” Or it means “I’m an ass with an overinflated sense of self-importance and I mark all my e-mail as urgent just so everyone knows how URGENT my work is.” But very rarely is it something of any kind of cosmic importance.
Whatever, I usually just ignore them anyway, so it doesn’t bother me. But the day Old Guy comes and asks me how to mark an e-mail with high importance is the day I quit.
That’s all I’ve got.
Ah, the red exclaimation point of ASAP. I usually get this from the sales reps who, no matter how many times I have told that responses from my department have a two week turnaround, would like me to know that this request is totally urgent and not at all a result of their poor planning. Also, it's always worth millions of dollars in business. Seriously.
ReplyDeleteExactly, but it's never so important or valuable that they couldn't have done it on time themselves. Or picked up a phone.
ReplyDeleteThis is hilarious
ReplyDeleteExclamation points are used in my job pretty effectively, actually. My favorite exceptions to this are when, for the fourth time, we are sent an email reminder on impending events or the proper protocol for processing something.
ReplyDelete