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Champions of Coms #1

How NOT To Write Emails

Work without email is hardly imaginable these days. Emails have become so ubiquitous that sometimes you have to take a step back and ask yourself: is this still communication or is this art? I am pretty sure, what I received today was the latter. To give you the necessary context, here's how it went:

Sender wrote an email to multiple TO-recipients, of which I had the privilege to be one.

Subject: FWD:FWD:FWD: "<<lots of acronyms none of which I was familiar with>> contract"

Content:

"Hello,

this with supplements of <<more cryptic acronyms>>

<<27 lines of signature>>"

Attachment: <<acronyms>>.xlsx

Somewhere not too deep in my mind I have three simple drawers for emails: 

1. do now, 

2. delegate, 

3. art. 

Upon first scan the lights of the art-drawer immediately started to blink. But then I hesitated. I doubted. I questioned. I contemplated:"Nah! That's too easy. Let's do this oldschool and think this through." So I took my standard 2 minutes time and analyzed the email thoroughly. I looked into the history of all forwarded emails and went right down the rabbit hole to the original email that had triggered the entire avalanche. I looked up the acronyms so I could understand their every meaning - 8 minutes of my life: gone. I even quick-scanned the referenced documents - another 22mins invested. Finally I tried to figure out what the Excel spreadsheet was all about, which was kind of hard because the content was anything but self explanatory - no titles, no comments, no hints, no obvious structure, no clue - another minute of lifetime slipped away. "Alright, I take what I have and make the best of it, just to be 100% sure." I thought to myself and started to type a reply to the sender:

"Hello <<sender>>,

thank you for your email. I appreciate your support. How may I help you?

Best,

David"

I really had no clue what I was expected to do. But I gave the sender the benefit of a doubt. After all, the notion that I shouldn't have received this email from the sender in the first place was nothing but my own logical conclusion. But hey, even I make mistakes ;-)

Sender replied with:

"...thanks for your reply. I guess at the moment there's nothing for you to do.

<<27 lines of signature>>"

Now I had it in writing: Well, if that isn't a piece of art, I don't know what is. It made me think. It made me think hard. And then with a sudden strike of an epiphany, I remembered: First think, then ink.


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