Yes, Email is Still the Way to #fail in a Deep, Meaningful Way…
However, there are some ways to fail in smaller ways on a daily basis:
- General etiquette violators
- bcc: everyone – There are times when bcc: is desirable, e.g., when sending out a broadcast email to a large group to limit the damage of those who are too quick with “Reply to All” button. In this case, however, a person is conducting a business transaction of some sort and not revealing who else is “in the know”. Results in a lot of, “I don’t know if you’ve seen this or not,” email forwards.
- Thread trimmer – selectively deletes one or two people periodically from a large email chain, confusing every participant on the list.
- Reply to All abuser – distinguished from the casual Reply to All user by the use of the button in replying to department-wide email distributions.
- Subtle Humor User – keeps you guessing on whether the person is joking.
- !???!! – really is enthusiastic and/or concerned.
- Priorities are out-of-whack – uses high (or even stranger low) priority markers to try to get attention for what is generally little more than an FYI email.
- Receipt requestor – Good grief, do you really need a read receipt from the 100 people you emailed about the pot luck on Friday?
- Appearance violators
- Pastels and Cute Fonts User – Not that there’s anything wrong with that.
- Script kitty – uses a nearly illegible cursive font for a default font.
- Noisy Backgrounder – uses a background that obscures the ability to read the text on top.
- Reverse video – loves light on dark appearance settings, which completely wreck havoc with anyone else’s replies.
- Signature violators
- The signature that never ends – Really, if you need to be contacted so badly that you leave your mother-in-law’s home phone, you probably should have a company cell phone.
- Motivation spreader – Puts motivational sayings in the signature.
- Massive signature image – Uses an embedded image in the signature that often dwarfs the email body itself.
- Attachment violators
- Media mailer – Those who try to attach mp3s and videos and somehow manage to fly under the “attachment size limit” radar. Unaware that audio and video actually take up a lot of storage space.
- Sender of abnormally large documents – Someone who manages to send “office” documents that somehow violate the normal proportions and end up hitting the attachment size limit after about 10 pages.
- Image embedder – Someone who doesn’t realize that Outlook converts embedded images to the most inefficient format possible. May use PowerPoint as an email formatting tool.
