Friday, August 14, 2009
A Request
When I set up this blog, my primary goal was to establish a place where we could chat and exchange ideas freely. Another goal was to reduce our use of office email for non-work related communications since it's frowned upon by management. In recent weeks, I have received requests from a couple of our teammates (who shall remain anonymous) who wish to reduce the junk email generated by our team. Basically, it goes like this:
I don't appreciate coming to work and opening my email to find my inbox filled with junk. Sometimes there's 20 or 30 messages of you guys putting each other down and LOLing. I shouldn't have to sort through these junk messages to get to my job related messages and messages from my family. So can you tell everyone to save it for when we get to the park or take it to the blog?
While I personally enjoy the banter (most of the time), I respect this point of view. We do let it get out of hand sometimes and I can see where management (should they ever become aware of it) might wonder if they're giving us enough work. It's possible to set up filtering in Outlook to direct messages with certain content or senders to a specific folder but it may not be something everyone knows how to do. Besides that, the burden should be on the senders, not the recipients.
So to accommodate our teammates who don't want to receive these messages, I'm asking everyone to please restrict their use of the "Reply to All" button to those situations in which your message really needs to be seen by everyone. Also, if you just want to joke around or pile on Grandpa, let's do it here on the blog. It won't hinder anybody's work or communications with their family. Let's please respect the wishes of our teammates. Much obliged.
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I can definately understand the person's feelings although I think that person should have just requested to be taken off of the email list and only updated with pertinent information. I know that I forget to log on to this blog while I am at work and the email is more accessible to talk with/play with my teammates. And while I know that we get carried away, it is never us putting each other down but more of us being "cool" with each other. I am not being argumentive, just stating how I feel just like they did! I do not think that I will give up emailing my teammates, just being more selective on who I talk to now....no hard feelings/none taken!
ReplyDeleteBeing removed from the email list would cause one to miss the important messages, too. I'm not sure that would be a very good solution.
ReplyDeleteMy remedy was to create a "Softball" folder in my Inbox and set up the filters to send any messages containing the words "softball," "Nicholl Park," "practice," "Grandpa," or "Bricks" to that folder. With that in place, most of the softball related stuff gets separated from the work-related messages.
Oh, and if anyone wants to set up a separate "Softball" folder and you need some help, just let me know. I can give you a hand with it.
ReplyDeleteNeci, one other thing I should have made clearer -- I was paraphrasing two different messages into one shortened one. I hope my phrasing didn't convey anger because there wasn't any. It more like a little frustration.
ReplyDeleteThere's no expectation that we give up emailing our teammates. It's just a request that the more personal stuff not be sent to everyone on the team.
For example, the exchange last week that started with an inquiry about practicing on Sunday (of interest to everyone) but developed into wisecracking between a small number of us (not of interest to everyone). There were 50+ messages of wisecrcks and half-insults in one afternoon. It's the latter part we've been asked to curtail by limiting it to the participants and not using the "Reply to All" function. It's a fair request and probably one that's in our best interest. If one small group of employees is running up a high volume of email traffic, we run the risk of drawing some unwanted attention from the "Think Twice First" people.
And speaking just for myself, please don't take me out of the loop. I find the wisecracks and half-insults highly amusing. And how's an old rocker going to get schooled about Nelly and Jody Watley if he's out of the loop? ;-)