why i pretty much HATE email

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so, email seems to be the glue that holds it all together in the officeplace, ya know? companies that are especially dispersed across multiple geolocations — or teams that are collaborating across corporate cultures and all that — rely on quick, asynchronous messaging — little threads of messages that progress over microbits of time, really — to help get the job done, whatever that job may be

woman typing on computerbut email falls short on the promise almost every step of the way

and it seems to happen almost every time, too, these little missed opportunities to effectively communicate in an efficient and real way

a lot of the time we’re trying to ask very timely questions of other teammates, with the expectation that an email response will help guide the next decision in a process that needs some human form of input — the message goes out when the email is sent, and like some sort of nearly-primitive technohumanic echolocation system of perverted expectations, that message goes out and the actual physics of the system are totally inexistent in the natural world

whether we want to admit it or not, too, my friends, we, as human beings, are simply animals that still exist in a natural, analog world — and no matter what the original impetus of the outgoing signal might have been, to solve matters of virtual or physical logistics, the actuality of the decision that needs human input is almost always critical in the context of a moment

sending-emaila lot of times, too, email is used as the mechanism to pass the buck, if you know what i mean — someone asked me to do something in good faith, and now i, as some aspiring corporate assistant manager looking to get ahead and climb the corporate ladder through perceived internal office delegation to coworkers, i forward the request { or sometimes even start up a new thread to build the illustion that this request originates directly from me } as an attempt to get someone else to do the work i was originally asked to do

this shit drives me crazy

and i pick up on it right away

almost every time

what’s cool, though — and i hate to admit this — what’s really cool about email, though, is that built into the asynchonicity of the system is the extremely amazing capability to leverage passive-aggressive methodologies in a nearly invisible manner

if some total lugnut with these lofty aspirations of garnering promotional titleshifts attempts to pass their work off onto you with an email forward or some request that is obviously not written in their own virtual-vocal cadence — my first recommendation to you, as one office survivalist to the other, is to simply fail to respond

don’t bother

ignore the signal

oops — a digital coral reef blocked the message from one dolphin to the other and ultimately you just need to pretend you never received the communication

its actually pretty simple to feign this missed blip on the radar, simply because there is such an overproliferation of email communication in just about every office workplace out there

its epidemic, really

its disgusting

email is overused and misused

people do not understand how to effectively use email as a tool for good

its a rare individual that can write and send a clear, concise email message and actually move a process forward to the next step with real, human input involved as the response

there is almost always a delay, an awkward stutter in the flow of email communications

People_Computeranother thing to remember, when communicating via email, is that email is almost always written in consensus with others on the other side of a relationship — sometimes we even ask for advice regarding the nature of the request and wording of that communication involved in the crafting of an email before it is sent over the fence

in other words, there is an art to email and there is a lot of team editing involved in the nuance of these messages

another reason to let an email sit for a while as you digest the potential twists and turns involved in the myriad potential interpretations of the language implemented in our email communications

email is almost never an overtly direct form of communication

its not explicit

unless, of course, its spam we’re talking about

but office email leaves a LOT of room for interpretation, translation and creative thought

to be continued …

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