Death by Email

As I finished up another chapter in Michael Bugeja's Interpersonal Divide this week, I found some ugliness in how we have come to socialize based on new media in the workplace. The reliance on email for communicating, from simple gestures to complex problems, has created tension, frustration and confusion within the department I work. The statistics on email, as well as other ways to communicate using new media are staggering. Check out the following video:



I started as a phone representative without a company issued email address. I spoke to my superiors face to face or by phone. Work stayed at work at the end of the day. I moved up to an Internet Specialist, complete with my very own email privledges. Now, work follows me home. I can even access my desktop from my home computer (which I opt NOT to do).



As I was reading Bugeja, I felt the impulse to take the book to a few individuals I work with and say "Read this!" This is what has happened to our work relationship! We have more respect for the email messages we send, reply to and forward than for one another. And it's not entirely our fault. It's how the world has become, digitalized and on demand. I include myself in it too, because I responded in the same way. Death to email.

As I've mentioned in class, I typically do not see my supervisor most days. She corresponds with (note) certain individuals by email only. My team members and myself have even mentioned this to her - that we are inundated with emails all day long, and it would be nice to hear from her directly instead of in the electronic sense.

So, she started leaving us post it notes, stuck directly onto our monitors. That didn't last long and the emails from her continue. She will email us everything - forwards of emails she has received, emails of praise, emails providing feedback, emails, emails, emails! I am honestly surprised we don't get an email when she goes to the restroom... That's usually where I'll end up running into her. Certainly not at my cube, 15 feet from her office. For the most part, she only communicates via email. And I have simply returned the favor. Our word choices and the missing tone of voice from those messages has made us upset with each other on various occasions. I've been written up more than once for "not communicating properly" and "unprofessional" conduct. Her" file" I am sure does not reflect the same. Yet, I've simply mimicked her communication style.

I will admit, I don't fully blame her. Due to the age of new media, we have this desire to only communicate electronically at the office. I question why we even have phones at our desk. It is as if we are too lazy to pick up the receiver and dial four digits (yes, I myself included). A problem comes up and an email is off to someone to look into the issue. Usually this person or that has to be CC'd on it as well. Everyone has to be in the loop. It's policy. It doesn't matter if one of those people can't do anything to resolve it or won't even see the email until after the issue was dealt with. Fill up the inboxes is the motto around here!

Once that email is on its way, at least one person takes something in that message the wrong way. So, skip the phone and don't asked only the Sender to clarify. Simply hit reply all (company policy again), add a few more names to the CC list and find the nicest way possible to make the original sender feel belittled for even sending the message. After all, that person is higher up on the corporate ladder and she knows that certainly the original sender does not have a clue about what goes into fixing the issue...

Typically that sender would have hit reply all (company policy) and blow the situation even further out of proportion, but that day, the original sender had been reading Bugeja's chapter "Habits of a High Tech Age." Immediately after reading the email and understanding that the recipient may have mistook the first message, she picked up her phone and dialed the recipient's receiver to resolve this before it got further out of hand. Of course, the recipient didn't answer, but hey, at least I tried right? And I've made it a personal goal now to communicate more face to face at work or to at least call the person. I write enough emails in a day. Death to email.