!!!

[pen_grunt]

Rant #2 of the day (because I'm, apparently, very complainy today):

Priority email should be banned. Nothing is so urgent that you can't just TELL me it's urgent--in fact, in the history of me working at this company, nothing has EVER been urgent enough to warrant an !!! Urgent email without someone finding me and telling me what's going on.

I just got a !!! Urgent email from a co-worker. This co-worker sends every other freaking email with the priority !!! Urgent tag. The urgent message this time? Her kid is selling wrapping paper and chocolates for school.

Yes. So very urgent. All her emails are now ... Non-Urgent for me.

Comments

[lisa-e-is-me.livejournal.com]

Someone's got delusions of grandeur if she believes so many of her messages are of the utmost importance to everybody else. And to email everyone about buying crap her kid is selling for school? Even without the Urgent tag, that's pretty tacky. And lazy.

[pen-grunt.livejournal.com]

I don't even MIND the using-her-coworkers-to-support-her-kid's-school thing so much, but how am I supposed to take ANY urgent emails seriously when she deems THIS urgent?

There's a bit of a backstory here too, I've had multiple conversations with her about project deadlines. When a project that I'm responsible is due in two days, you don't have to email me 5-6 times a day asking where I am on it. Especially when you're not my manager and I don't report to you.

More irritating still? She has emailed OTHER people asking them to ask me about the status of things.

All of these emails are, of course, URGENT!!!

Wow.

[jasonecaesar.livejournal.com]

Totally FTL.

Re: Wow.

[pen-grunt.livejournal.com]

FTL? Is it For the Loss?

Re: Wow.

[jasonecaesar.livejournal.com]

Yes, it is. =D

[purplesquirrel.livejournal.com]

Forward that email to your HR department. Here it's against company policy to use email for such solicitations.

[pen-grunt.livejournal.com]

Unfortunately (and fortunately sometimes) we're too small a company to have an HR department. I suppose I'm the closest thing to it since I sometimes tell people to turn down the volume on Family Guy over lunch (I'm right by the lunch area, and it can be distracting if I still have to work).

Oh, how I wish we were immune to solicitation...every week there's some kid's thing...some charity walk... Not that I mind them on principle, but it's all too much in the URGENT!!! email box.

Time for a force-level escalation in the email arms war.

[luno.livejournal.com]

Reply with an urgent, high-priority, receipt-requested email, flagged with a reminder that's set in the past (causes an immediate popup upon receipt).

Re: Time for a force-level escalation in the email arms war.

[llythefaerye.livejournal.com]

NICE! I like you . . .

Re: Time for a force-level escalation in the email arms war.

[pen-grunt.livejournal.com]

Ha! I must do this thing of which you speak.

Re: Time for a force-level escalation in the email arms war.

[sarcasma.livejournal.com]

Heartily seconded! Someone sent me one of those once as a joke (the text was something like "I NEED A DRINK") but man, opening and deleting it was like fighting with an octopus.