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1. Don't CC a load of people into an email to show how clever / important you think you are.
2. Don't tell everyone on point #1 type email how you worked together with X & Y to get the job done... when you were just a gofer for X & Y, who don't need any help to do their jobs.
as per my previous email.
Please find attached.
Stop whinging about people ccing others in after you've done a shit job at work.
Hi Team,
My thoughts match yours, nothing to add.
Best,
Jimmy
Thankyou for your email, it was both long and unnecessary. I understand that you are a lawyer and are probably paid by the word please see my replies in red.
Actually, upon reading the first sentiecne you clearly have no idea what you are talking about so leave the technical stuff to those in the know and **** the **** off you smart arsed ****.
The email reply I would like to send
1. Don’t CC a load of people into an email to show how clever / important you think you are.
This is my absolute favourite thing as, more often than not, the whinger will be wrong. I take great delight in replying, telling them and all the people they CC’d, how they are wrong.
Once had a customer kicking off that I hadn’t included a bit of data in a spreadsheet, he copied his boss in, who rang up to give me what for. I explained to him that the data was there, and talked him through it.
He replied to his colleague ‘if you look at the spreadsheet again, with your eyes, you will see that Tom has done as asked’
😂
He replied to his colleague ‘if you look at the spreadsheet again, with your eyes, you will see that Tom has done as asked’
New keyboard please, that's a classic.
tomhoward
This is my absolute favourite thing as, more often than not, the whinger will be wrong. I take great delight in replying, telling them and all the people they CC’d, how they are wrong.
Yeah that's great.
My favourite is when a customer CCs my boss, their boss and a number of colleagues when they think we've ****ed up. Then when they realise it's actually their fault, the CCs mysteriously disappear and it just goes to me. Oh no wait I've just CC'd everyone back on so they know it was your mistake, oopsie 😇
Julie if you could co-ordinate with Steph on this one and then report back to me. Bob and his team are available for support if you need it.
Single line (internal) emails:
have you done X?
what's the update on Y?
can you send me the link for Z?
that would all be far better managed as a chat on Teams.
My boss does this. cc's her deputy (so she's "sighted"), asks me a one-line question and then, if I don't reply within an hour or so, follows it up with a second email, again cc'ing her deputy and asking if I got the first email.
Her email management is appalling.
It's all a bit passive-aggressive for me :o)
I'm going to start somewhere in the middle because that's what's mainly occupying my thoughts. I'm going to break down the argument into:
1. numbered bullet points
- with indentations to covey their hierarchy in my mind
- probably with a few spurious ones for visual balance
2. and no apparent logic, but it breaks the text up nicely.
And after a few paragraphs of this I may, but may not, meander my way towards a question hidden possibly somewhere in the middle of a paragraph, or perhaps right at the end of the email it's your job to find it after all, asking for your advice or even decision on something - either way my back is now well covered whether you find my point or not.
And then I'll round it off with something platitudinous. All good for you?
Senior people in an organisation that are obviously far too busy and important to use salutation or punctuation in an email.
The same people who spend Teams meetings on mute, clearly doing something else, only to interrupt someone to ask a stupid question the rest of us covered five minutes ago.
Replying to an email with a question about a different project, but not changing the Subject field. Then whinging to your CC audience that the matter has not been dealt with.
I want to retire so I can just leave my auto-responder on
"Alex is not replying to emails as he's spending a year dead for tax reasons'
If it's good enough for Hotblack Desiato, it's good enough for me.
Single line (internal) emails:
Single line (external) emails, followed by two screenfuls of quasi-legal bollocks in the auto-attached footer.
Hotblack Desiato - that explains why the service from them (Estate Agents, Islington) is soooo horrifying bad. 😉
Any email that starts ‘Friendly reminder’ or ‘Gentle reminder’ when there’s still a month left till the deadline
Usually sent by someone who never seems to do anything other than send ‘Friendly Reminders’
Bob, there are 2 new starters on Nick's team. Could you organise some training on the Manchester systems so that they are operational by mid august?, they'll need sign off by w/c 15th. That'd be great thanks. Any problems let Julie know by the 10th please.
I have been "accused" of writing "short terse" email responses by a client... i pointed out you pay me by the hour, if you want fluffy bollocks i am happy to charge (note - maintained my short terse approach)
Polite Reminder!
Usually read with a less than polite "Oh do **** off" muttered under your breath.
“short terse” email response
tautology
People who don't understand why there's a To and a CC field.
If you want me to do something, send it to me and even better make your request (not an Ask, btw) clear.
If you CC me, chances are I won't read it until I've dealt with all the To emails and all the other stuff I need to do. If at all, as I assume you're just copying me in 'for info'
Currently on a classic megathread at work. We sell software, our partner is implementing a system for their customer using our software. The partner has only a very basic grasp of how to use the software, and is trying to roll out a huge programme with massive workloads in a very large country. They can't figure out how to work the platform on which our software runs, and they have made a pig's ear of their app that runs on our software. And yet, the boss at the partner is sending daily anguished emails complaining that his reputation is at stake and we need to fix it straight away. No mate, sorry, we're not responsible for your lack of skills no matter how upset you get.
Footer: Advance warning of Holiday 25/07/2022 - 08/08/2022. Anything Urgent please email Caroline.
Emails from external consultants, asking for information they need from you to report back to your own management.
RM.
boss at the partner is sending daily anguished emails complaining that his reputation is at stake and we need to fix it straight away. No mate, sorry, we’re not responsible for your lack of skills no matter how upset you get.
Oh, if I had a pound for every 'please drop everything, I need your help urgently' email which is only urgent now because the sender has sat on it doing **** all for a fortnight...
The best email response I’ve seen in some time covers many of the issues in this thread.
“Poor planning on your behalf does not equate to urgency on mine”
Shame he’s retired now.
fluffy bollocks
Really not what you want in this hot weather.
Clients who email about your software "the program is not working".
When you ask for more details: "I can't send emails it gives an error message"
When you politely ask (through gritted teeth) for what the error message actually says: "it's unable to send the emails"
Please send me a (****) screenshot: "Outlook does not recognise the user account, please make sure you're logged in"
I know this is really technical and hard to figure out, but you need to go to Outlook and log in again. It's nothing to do with me, my software is not 'crashing', and no I have no idea why Outlook would log you out randomly.
My boss does the same thing: I'll get an email "feature X is not working, can you fix it?"
Aargh you are a software developer yourself, a little more info would be great! Do you want me to spend half an hour debugging just to find and recreate the error, which only shows up under specific conditions?
Please send me a (****) screenshot: “Outlook does not recognise the user account, please make sure you’re logged in”
The staggering lack of IT literacy among many (most?) people in offices never ceases to amaze me.
We have a really good remote working environment and IT backup, we're all on decent new-ish kit, Windows 10 etc, easily fast enough to cope with Teams, SharePoint and so on. But one person having to log in again will often involve a dozen panicked calls to IT.
And yet people still email files across to each other, ask for edits then wonder why there are 5 different versions each one containing edits from a different person.
The company recently bought (on the insistence of one person who'd used it before and thought it was wonderful) some meeting management and report writing software which is terrible. 15-20 years ago it was probably OK but in a fast-paced collaborative working environment, it is akin to a student handing a teacher a piece of homework and getting it back a week later - you simply cannot do shared working. Teams / SharePoint addresses all these issue, we used it before...and now we've gone backwards by a decade. 🙄
The NHS:
Please fill out the 40 page document with evidence. policies, training, written submission etc etc, please submit compliance of safeguarding within 30 days, with a not so gentle rejoinder that it a legal requirement. From an local organisation that itself hasn't thus far, appointed a safeguarding lead: a legal requirement...
excellent continuity of care...trebles all round
The staggering lack of IT literacy among many (most?) people in offices never ceases to amaze me
You reap what you sow, The decision way back in the dim and distance past to make desktops "easy to use" with a graphical interface for the end user made the bed in which we all now lie, blame Xerox if you want, but this was the pact made with the devil to shift units. They only have themselves to blame.
You reap what you sow, The decision way back in the dim and distance past to make desktops “easy to use” with a graphical interface for the end user made the bed in which we all now lie, blame Xerox if you want, but this was the pact made with the devil to shift units. They only have themselves to blame.
Anything that requires use of the command line to implement and powershell is not easy to use. I'm looking at you Exchange and your third party domain implementation.
This is your life and it's ending one email at a time.
CC: everyone.
You reap what you sow, The decision way back in the dim and distance past to make desktops “easy to use” with a graphical interface for the end user made the bed in which we all now lie
I disagree (of course! 🙂 ) The user-friendliness of computers was and is necessary to enable most people to use them, and most people should be using them.
The problem as I see it is rubbish IT education. People throw words around like app, server, internet, cloud, sync, backup and so on but no-one's ever properly explained to them what these things mean. It's the same with technical and semi-technical roles. People don't really understand terms like high availability, disaster recovery and so on.
The big problem is that some of them don't listen to the people who do understand.
Ah, the good old...
collaborative working environment
... which means, instead of the shared drive we used to use to store documentation, we can now scatter it liberally across Sharepoint, MS Teams teams, channels within MS Teams MS Teams chats, Confluence pages, Jira pages, attachments to Confluence pages, attachments to Jira pages, links to Confluence pages from MS Teams channels, links to MS Teams channels from Jira pages, attachments to Jira pages, sub-pages in Jira andonandonandonandonandon
We used to have the electronic equivalent of a filing cabinet, now we have the electronic equivalent of a barn where documentation is deposited and distributed via a leafblower...
Subject heading: Re **
Our whole business is ** now I've got to try & work out which bloody ***** out of the 100's of current ones you are on about 😡
O365 hater...
People don’t really understand terms like high availability, disaster recovery and so on.
Not only that, but if they do get a problem they don't bother reading what's in the error message that someone has carefully selected to display to them, nor do they bother trying to recall exactly what they were doing at the time or even explain what the issue actually is. Back in uni days I worked for Ford supporting their "new" Wang PCs and people would just phone and say "My Wang won't work" leaving a game of 20 questions to establish which bit of it actually wasn't working - roll on almost 4 decades and you still get people saying "This spreadsheet isn't calculating properly" without bothering to say which of the many cells on the many tabs is actually causing their issue.
Oh I'm so glad I left all that behind.
I was going to tell you all of dumb people not understanding anything, but no I'll leave you all to that now 😀
Systems do not fix poor process discipline. Seen it may times. "The next shiny new app will fix the process problems we are having". No they won't.
The best email response I’ve seen in some time covers many of the issues in this thread.
“Poor planning on your behalf does not equate to urgency on mine”
Shame he’s retired now.
Retired or sacked? 😁 I sent that as a response to a last minute request once, didn't have the balls to do it without checking with my boss first, (I'd not been in post long). He was a prickly bugger though, so was more than happy with it!
Julie if you could co-ordinate with Steph
I worked in an office in Glasgow doing customs clearance for a bit. There was a young secretary called Julie who was very nice but inexperienced. The boss was dictating a letter to her that contained the phrase 'we duly amended the customs entry' which she rendered as 'wee Julie amended the customs entry'. I sometimes wonder what became of wee Julie.
I have replied to emails full of jargon with " I dont understand this. Could you put it in plain English? " always goes down well
Poor planning on your behalf does not equate to urgency on mine”
A phrase I utter regularly. Had a chap ring up last week asking us to quote on something before his presentation meeting to his client at 9am. It was 830am.
We used to have the electronic equivalent of a filing cabinet, now we have the electronic equivalent of a barn where documentation is deposited and distributed via a leafblower…
Sir needs BIM protocols in his life. This will make you very happy and everyone will be fully onboard and completely adopt the new approach. Your projects will become smooth operations and the data a process will be captured in such a way that it is auditable and be usable for future works.
Systems do not fix poor process discipline. Seen it may times. “The next shiny new app will fix the process problems we are having”. No they won’t.
This was exactly the reason we got this report-writing / meeting management software.
Oh, all our papers are all over the place (they're not), it's difficult reviewing them (it's not), what we need is a system where all our reports are written within it (what, like SharePoint then...?) and we can have an auditable review trail...
So we got this system and it turns out you can only write specific covering reports within it, not the actual documents themselves which still have to be written and saved in SharePoint. So now we have two parallel writing systems, one of which is clunky and shit and causes more problems because people are having to go out of SharePoint, open up a third party bit of software and write / review reports in that.
Ooh, I've just had a good one, someone's just messaged me in Teams along the lines of:
"Hi, I think you were away last week (I was), you missed the kick-off meeting about Project X. Have you watched the recording, because you might be affected"
Yes, of course I'm catching up on all the meetings I missed by watching recordings of them, of course I'm doing that.
The problem as I see it is rubbish IT education.
let me look for the user instructions that are included in nearly every piece of modern technology, oh no, wait...! Who was it that started the trend of not including a comprehensive and useful manual with their products...I can't remember
I don't think it's fair to blame users for not being able to use the technology when the producers of that technology insist on continuing to tell us that we don't need any education to use their products .
Our "management" use "just a wee reminder" I like to point out that it's not a reminder if this is the first email on the subject.
Sir needs BIM protocols in his life.
Probably, yes, but what we'll get is a 'better', but which I mean an additional, Collaborative Working Toolsuite
I don’t think it’s fair to blame users for not being able to use the technology when the producers of that technology insist on continuing to tell us that we don’t need any education to use their products .
That's long been an issue with consumer products though - the "owner's manual" you get now is a QR code taking you to hours of video reviews and tutorials.
In some respects it's quite good cos the content is supposedly more up to date than a printed booklet could be but in other respects, people end up not being bothered to view it all and just using 5% of the available features of [device / product].
Teams is a classic for that - there are some very good video tutorials on it but most people's introduction to Teams was "oh shit, lockdown = remote working = Teams = just muddle along until you get the hang of it"
IT drones bitching about others not being as dorky as them when it comes to IT
Still, it pays for their next Santa Cruz i suppose
People who don’t understand why there’s a To and a CC field.
Agree. if I'm cc'd I'll only read it if it's mentioned by someone else as something that is worth reading.
If you send me an email demanding I do something, and you're not my Boss, don't expect a reply, until you 'ask'.
The best email response I’ve seen in some time covers many of the issues in this thread.
“Poor planning on your behalf does not equate to urgency on mine”
Shame he’s retired now
My standard response when someone's pushing me for something that I've only just been informed of is "how long have YOU known about this?"
Been at the tail-end of a career/job is handy at times 🙂
I have replied to emails full of jargon with ” I dont understand this. Could you put it in plain English? ” always goes down well
A couple of months ago I received my induction and student support email from the University I've started studying with.
I emailed back pointing out that 12(!) different internal acronyms in a first email made it pretty undecipherable, let alone accessible if someone has dyslexia...
Been at the tail-end of a career/job is handy at times 🙂
The subtle art of not giving a shit is life-changing. I learned this in the mid-90s.
"Do this or risk getting sacked," well brilliant, that's not a threat, you'd be doing me a favour. I'll just stick that in the same ****-it bucket as the pay rise you promised me last month then, shall I?
We used to have the electronic equivalent of a filing cabinet, now we have the electronic equivalent of a barn where documentation is deposited and distributed via a leafblower
Used to take me hours to fail to get the relevant info from that filing cabinet that I can find in 20 seconds on the internet.
let me look for the user instructions that are included in nearly every piece of modern technology, oh no, wait…!
That's not what I meant. I mean basic IT concepts, which needs to be done in schools.
They used to make printed in-depth manuals, then they stopped bothering because literally no-one read them. It used to be a big thing. If you go to an old office building there are cabinets all over the place full of ring binders from some piece of 90s software.
My bit of the nhs whet paper light using a comprehensive but non user friendly system. We did get some training but nothing like enough even for someone like me who used computers. Some of my colleagues never used one before. They were totally lost.
We should have all been taught to touch type as well. Watching even senior folk pecking away at a keyboard with two fingers is painfull and a major waste of time
We should have all been taught to touch type as well. Watching even senior folk pecking away at a keyboard with two fingers is painfull and a major waste of time
You are actually describing my workplace!
I once had a line manager who would bring absolutely every deadline for delegated work forward a week. It meant I often had a task land in my inbox that he wanted completed in three days and I soon learnt to go back up the chain to the source of the task and find out the true deadline. I would then set about the task so that I could have it done in time to send back to the line manager with a couple of days to check it before it really needed completing. He would start badgering a day before his artificial deadline, to which I always replied, via email "Do you want it doing a week ahead of schedule or do you want it doing properly?" He brought up workload and time management at my next appraisal, telling me I was idle and lacked integrity because I questioned his authority and went behind his back.
I suppose I had the last laugh because I used the example in my promotion interview for the skills of prioritising and organising workloads, and "managing upwards" and he resigned following a breakdown.
and he resigned following a breakdown.
Ohhh the mega lolz.
Watching even senior folk pecking away at a keyboard with two fingers is painfull and a major waste of time
Likely the same people who whine about "Millennials" and the rise of calculators. (Literally just today I saw this 'dumbing down' argument in a comment on an advert for Grammarly.)
You're right though, of course. Basic IT literacy is still lacking and computers were seriously entering the mainstream about when I started working in IT 30 years ago. There's really no excuse for it any more, boasting that you 'don't understand computers' like it's a badge of pride should be in the same bucket as being unable to do joined-up writing.
That said, I absolutely sympathise with people because as Mols and others have suggested, how are folk expected to learn? You wouldn't give someone a car key and go "off you go then" because cars have been around for years. We need to be better at this, we need to stop assuming and teach people. Touch typing is of little use for, well, people like me who spend half their day on meta keys, but it should be considered a core skill.
“Poor planning on your behalf does not equate to urgency on mine”
I may set that as my out of office....
You wouldn’t give someone a car key and go “off you go then” because cars have been around for years
Based on what I see on the roads, that's exactly how most people learn to drive.
Point.
Ohhh the mega lolz.
He didn't have the breakdown because of me don't worry. The man was an incompetent bully, an insufferable bastard of a man who had blagged his way to his position through unscrupulous and extremely outdated, if not dishonest working practices. His breakdown was "stress related" after he instructed a support-staff analyst to carry out a downright unlawful intelligence operation. It was pointed out by the analyst that what he was instructing him to do was likely to result in a prison sentence, if not several. The resulting shouting and screaming match was what was termed a "breakdown" when the dust settled.
“You’re my colleague not my boss”
The comms team (person paid to send emails and make sure stuff is on brand) sends an ‘all staff’ email advising of a new policy that needs to be read, digested and signed.
Which is fine.
The same few idiotic individuals who ‘reply to all’ saying they have done it. I don’t give a crap if they want to be seen to be doing stuff first, get the funk out. While you are there find somewhere to work that means you are not near a computer. Or other people.
I have two little posters pinned next to my screen:
"You will never reach your destination if you stop and throw stones at every dog that barks"
"The most important thing is to remember that the most important thing is the most important thing"
For too long I was compromising on my own deliverables, in order to do things that other people were wanting/needing me to do to meet their own. I'm not too dogmatic about it, and it depends who's asking, but generally speaking I give priority to my own work/things I am measured on, before responding to people "barking" in my email.
“Poor planning on your behalf does not equate to urgency on mine”
Yeah - I've encountered a few people who've trotted that out when you ask them with help to meet a client deadline. I don't use it because it made them sound like a smug bellend who is refusing to help just to make a point. Maybe that's the professional reputation they were looking to build for themselves? To each their own I suppose.
I agree… and it certainly wouldn’t get you far in my workplace. It’s rarely the person who’s rushing that caused the rush.
And imagine if a triage nurse used that attitude in an emergency department!
And imagine if a triage nurse used that attitude in an emergency department!
True, but it’s unlikely that any situations being discussed here are life and death situations, with little or no prior warning. And often it’s the person making the request that’s being a dick about it, trying to make what is very much their problem, your problem because they are terrible at planning. I get that stuff comes up last minute, but demanding someone drop everything because you’ve screwed up is disrespectful and unlikely to win you many friends. I’ll do what I can to get you what you want, but I have a queue of people who got their request in before you did, why should you jump to the front?
I don’t use it because it made them sound like a smug bellend who is refusing to help just to make a point
Here here!
I also like to remind myself that fundamentally, the original purpose of bringing IT tools into the workplace was to make people's jobs a bit easier and more efficient. The fact that a lot of organisations now have entire divisions of people tasked with making the whole thing work, kind of defeats the object a little!
The requirement for an entire industry has developed off the back of tools that were ultimately meant to save time and costs to organisations!
I'm obviously getting very old.
“The most important thing is to remember that the most important thing is the most important thing”
My grandfather who worked in the NHS had this:
"I've done so much with so little for so long, that I'm now qualified to do anything with nothing."
You could just have a professional conversation about it? "It usually takes x days to do that, I can probably do it in Y days at a push - but not any sooner than that as I have a heap of urgent/important tasks queued-up". End result is the same, unless the result you are looking for is to make it clear that you think they are incompetent, and you want them to think you're a smug bellend.
but I have a queue of people who got their request in before you did, why should you jump to the front?
Because how most people prioritize work should probably be more sophisticated than "who asked first"
Because how most people prioritize work should probably be more sophisticated than “who asked first”
Should, but the SLA I'm measured on says otherwise.
Cougar
Many of the colleagues I referred to where not being wilfully useless at IT. They just had no use for one in their lives. They had no computer at home and simply had never used one until computer use became compulsory at work. The training we got assumed a basic level of familiarity that they just did not have.
I guess its not easy for folk like you immersed in it to realise that people like this are still around
We use our own software which rams a tag in the subject and files the email.
Was pretty funny when someone was complaining about person B and didn’t remove the tag.
Person B wasn’t happy when they saw that filed email.
Alway remember to remove auto archiving/filing tags when bitchin 🙂
The requirement for an entire industry has developed off the back of tools that were ultimately meant to save time and costs to organisations
TBH honest this isn’t a new thing, there was always the man that repaired the typewriters or the photocopy repair man.
Any reasonably sophisticated tool will spawn industry off the back of it.