Tuesday, November 6, 2007

Email Etiquette

Have you ever felt the wave of nausea and panic after hitting "send" on an email that is, shall we say, not nice? Twice in my younger (and less professional) days I accidentally sent an email to the wrong person. Both times, the wrong person was in management. Oops! One was innocuous, I simply stated that the frog I kept in a tank on my desk had died. For that, my boss kindly sent her condolences, and probably wondered why I felt it necessary to share that news. The other time, the manager from a department I'd been promoted out of, sent an email rife with spelling and grammatical errors. I thought I was forwarding that email, with my own snarky comments, to a co-worker and it turned out I hit "reply" instead of "forward" - I took a deep breath and with knocking knees I went to apologize face to face with the woman I'd offended. Luckily, she was very nice about it.
This afternoon I received an email I didn't like very much. I forwarded it to my mom, along with some comments that are just not printable here. As SOON as I hit sent I felt like someone threw ice water on my head - I was that sure I'd just replied to the person who angered me. I'd have been far more diplomatic! I'd have omitted the extraneous use of the F word! I checked the sent file at least 5 times to be sure - absolutely sure - that I sent that email to my mom. It has her name there, it says I forwarded the message .... so why do I still feel like I'm about to get fired?? Never mind the fact that everyone knows you shouldn't write anything in your work email that you wouldn't mind being plastered all over the kitchen. I know this. My reaction to that email was just too fast and strong to remember that.

Panic and pending joblessness aside, Sunday was report card day. Now I don't mean to brag...

Don't you hate it when people say that?? If you didn't mean to brag then you'd just be quiet about it. Not write it all over the place and tell everyone who passes you on the street. So yeah, I do mean to brag - Golden Boy got straight As! Even he was surprised! His face lit up and you could just see how happy he was. I'm so very proud of him. He's worked hard this year and it shows!

4 comments:

Veronica Garcia said...

HOLY CRAP! That's an eerie feeling when you don't know where your email has just gone. Lord knows I'd get fired for all the sh*t I've sent over my work email. Thank goodness for gmail and internet access at work.

Laura Marchant said...

I always feel like that with emails. That is why I usually just copy and paste all to a brand new email just to make sure the wrong email address isn't associated with it :-)

Judith said...

Great Post! Allot has to do with simply not paying attention or being too rushed. We all need to slow down and take more time with our e-mail activities!

I have a site full of free services, articles, a Blog and even a Netiquette Quiz. Why not stop by NetManners.com and check out my article Before You Click Send Checklist?

HTH! ;-)

Take care ~
Judith | NetManners.com

J said...

The best is when you send a "bad e-mail" reply from a mbobile device only to realize there were more people in the reply that than your mobile device showed.