The applications of emails are endless. You can send documents all over town without engaging sweaty, Lycra-clad boys on bikes, you can converse with people, leave them a message, provide details of a brief…and all at a time that suits you.
This particularly suits those who, like me, prefer to work overnight. Few phones get answered at that time and I don’t like to text in case the ‘you’ve got a message’ beep wakes the recipient.
I considered email a work tool, not something extra you have to do on top of your work. It was a facilitator, the oil in the engine. In short, I was a fully paid up member of the email fan club.
It all changed when I defected to the dark side of institutional employment and discovered email overload.
I’m only there for part of my week, but now, I hate email. I hate nearly everything about institutional email. But naturally, email overload is not the technology’s fault: it’s the users.
People in institutions (what a nice general term for those not flying solo!) think email equals communication and lots of communication makes them efficient and well understood.
Not true.
Every day of my dark side life, I sort through rubbish in my inbox. Not the fun stuff making me tempting offers of memorable weekends, because – to their credit – institutional spam filters seem highly effective. But the email overload stuff that has nothing to do with me.
Most days I get several emails headed something like ‘only for building three’. Fair enough but I’m not in building three so don’t send it to me. Fix your lists. I also get heaps about people I have never heard of retiring. Why don’t people invite people they know to functions, rather than everyone on staff? And then there are the emails about the lift that doesn’t work in building 2 and someone in carpark 4 has left their lights on .
None of it has a single thing to do with me.
The union is a big emailer and every time I receive something from them, I wonder if it is easier to just keep deleting it or to get in touch to give them my ‘compulsory unionism is a scourge on democracy and personal freedoms, so please do not spam me’ speech. I keep deleting them.
The real problem is the email overload of detritus prevents me from finding the email I need to read. Seriously, some of it is vital stuff that I need to know to do my job. It arrives unheralded and I could easily miss it. And have in fact. No one calls and says “I am sending over something really important, can you please read it and get back to me?”.
Another pet hate are really long emails. Don’t always read those! So I might miss something in the nethers. Also, emailers don’t think to use the subject line to engage or inform or even to help with filing.
Engaging the reader often seems to give way to ‘I sent it in an email so therefore I have done all I need to do’.
All up, institutional email is an abomination that fosters miscommunication and lack of understanding.
Institutional life is teaching me so much that helps me in my consulting work, I may be forever grateful to it.
Perhaps I should send someone an email and say thanks.
“ Most days I get several emails headed something like ‘only for building three’. Fair enough but I’m not in building three so don’t send it to me. ”
Karen Morath of M Power consults, trains, speaks and coaches in public relations, personal effectiveness, life balance and all things empowering.
