The problem with offensive emails
02 March 2009
How would you describe email? An essential, enabling technology perhaps? Or maybe a curse of the modern age?
Probably, if you are like me, it is not so much a case of being somewhere between the two, as veering from one extreme to the other depending on how your day at work is going and what effect email is having on it. Admittedly there is a huge amount of taken-for-granted time in between, as instant communication has transformed the way we conduct business.
There are endless arguments about whether it enables people to communicate more, and is thus a good thing, or it has led us to communicate badly (e.g. Hi B – RU OK? BR T.x) and is therefore a knife through the heart of the English language (or any other language, I assume). But none of that is the discussion that I had in mind for this column today, although my keyboard is metaphorically quivering in anticipation of all the conflicting arguments that this could throw up.
Instead I am going to concentrate on a single aspect that has recently become fashionable – the ‘read receipt’.
In truth there was a time, not that long ago, when it seemed that the mailing and delivery of electronic messages was a fairly random procedure. If a message was sent, but not delivered, we would raise our eyes skywards, as if looking into cyberspace itself, and smile at the vagaries of modern technology before putting the required information in the post. It happened a lot, believe it or not, and the ‘lost in the post’ days of emails were little more than decade in the past.
It seems an age ago, a technological age at least, but these days a message that is sent arrives. If it does not arrive then the sender has his message bounce back, so you know when something is not getting through. Admittedly an individual company’s server can occasionally do something unspeakable to delivered mail so that once in a while things do go wrong, but even in these cases the problem happens to all mail at a certain time, not individual messages. And I suppose it is also worth mentioning the differing rules applied to spam filters and firewalls do add a bit of uncertainty. But the point is that an individually addressed email will arrive and unless you do something foolish, like put ‘erogenous zone’ in the subject line and attach a 20MB picture, then it will reach its destination.
So why have a read receipt? The only consequence, as far as I can see, is that the sender will be offended unless appeased with an immediate reply – and it is likely that someone with this sort of disposition is likely to have been offended anyway, even without the read receipt. If someone ignores the message, and the sender receives no read receipt, then the sender is offended about being ignored. If the recipient does read the message, but doesn’t respond, then the sender is offended. Or the message could be deleted from the recipient’s inbox altogether, in which case the sender is offended. So the read receipt acts as a demand for immediate attention, in the same way as a whining dog is demanding to be let out, or a crying child is demanding to be fed.
The reason I have found this frustrating recently is that I, like so many other people, get far too much email. Too much for EPD server to cope with unless there is a degree of email management. So emails are read, briefly, in the preview pane that I always have open and then dragged into the relevant safe place on my hard drive, where they can await the time that they my be used or be useful.
The apparent outcome for the sender, is that their message has been deleted unread, and he or she is therefore offended.
So my message to all those who might want to send me an email, whether as a comment on this newsletter, our website or magazine, or indeed sending me editorial information about new products, exciting projects and ground-breaking technologies, please follow the three main rules:
Firstly, put all of the words in the message (not as an attachment).
Secondly, attach pictures (not insert them), but try and keep the file sizes down – very large files will bounce back.
And finally, don’t be offended!
Everything is read and everything is welcome – so please keep it coming.
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