Per My Previous Email…

Per my previous email…

Per the previous email that you cc’d the most irrelevant people on…

Per the previous email that I ignored due to ignorance…

Per my previous email I am done putting up with your shit…

Navigating the waters of office politics is already a labor of self preservation. Dealing with the lowly drama of fellow coworkers and stroking the fragile egos of Target loving managers is enough to make anyone hate their work environment. However, successful navigation can go off track when it comes to an office email.

Prior to this job, my experience with work emails was limited. There was either no communication done by email or the few emails exchanged left little room for ignorance. However, these days I swear it is hard not to intentionally and untentionally hit the land mine of email foolishness.

My most recent travels into the land of email insensitivity involved a coworker (we will call her Pen) finding something wrong in a campaign that was being worked on. Beyond the fact that she reached out to the wrong person, she also decided to CC me on the email along with another manager.

Of course the email didn’t include sufficient information and the “wrong person” (we will call her Ms. Direction) responded with the fact that she needed more details to (not) be helpful. Then comes the direct question to me in this group email: “Can you help with this?”

Now before I continue with my story, I did recently apologize to Pen for my email (I started typing this post weeks ago). Not because I truly felt bad about it but because I know most of my response was fueled by the annoyances of the day and Pen is honestly not the type to try and be an intentional asshole about work. So I felt I should apologize out of self awareness, because I was trying to be an asshole at the time.

Now, after I was asked to help, I deleted the email because I refused to have people add on to my already full plate. In my mind, I felt if someone had the time to find mistakes that were not directly my fault, they had time to find a resolution. So the next day, Ms. Direction sent me an email asking if I had found the information. I quickly responded with “No. But I would be happy to give the spreadsheets to Pen and she can locate the products.”

Apparently, my response didn’t go over well with management. The inactive manager on the email responded that she would locate the products herself. Which I felt like she was doing it in defense of Pen and told her it was ridiculous for her to take on more work when it was not her burden.

Then when I got up and went to the breakroom, Ms. Direction decided to have a conversation with the inactive manager about my response. It appears that some people viewed my response as harsh.

The email was even brought up to the Devil herself and she talked to other people, who were not even on the email, about it. But amusingly enough she never addressed me about it and Pen never spoke about it either.

But that is the thing about emails, it is so easy to offend someone or for others to talk to you too boldly and bring witnesses to your slaughter.

One manager (we will call her Humpty Dumpty, name inspired by a coworker) in particular would send emails to me about stuff that she thought I did wrong and cc people on it like the Devil (my direct boss), Ms. Direction (former manager and usually irrelevant on any emails sent to me), and other randoms. But I keep receipts, and I enthusiastically responded to Humpty with straight facts every time.

What is funny is that Humpty would respond back with an apology and all of those CC’d people would be removed. Being the amateur petty queen that I am, I would acknowledge the apologies……after adding all of those removed CC’d people back to the email.

Emails feel like a game to me at times and a test of my patience. From people spelling my name wrong and me fighting the urge to respond back with the misspelling of their name to just blatant disrespect. I walk close to the line at times: a manager misspelled my name in multiple emails and I started to respond back with the misspelling of his name (he eventually stopped responding with my name in the greeting). But I know where the line is and where the petty has to stop.

Tomorrow is a new day and I am sure my inbox is overdue for some new foolishness. Only time will tell…