The follow up to loving email. There will probably be part three at some point.
Email groups & reply to all
Email groups are useful things. Sometimes you really do need to contact a lot of people, not all of whom you know, so writing everybody's address isn't practical. When you do get an email that's been sent to a group list asking, for example, whether you have any special dietary requirements for the team away day, please please do make sure to reply all. We're all very interested in what you eat, and have been waiting all this time to find out.
Oh, and when somebody has replied all, and several other people have also replied all asking for this to stop, please do make sure to add your voice to the thread by replying all with the message "please stop replying all".
The message
Please do make sure to send a really long rambling chain of consciousness email about a situation that I know nothing about. But also, under no circumstance, ask me any questions or to do anything. I am, after all, a mind reader. I will trawl through your verbal diarrhea, and with the help of a spiritual medium work out what you want. Do not give me any clues - that would ruin the fun.
If you want to talk to me, never ever just phone me. Please just send me an email saying "can you call me". But don't end it there. Make sure that your phone number is not included anywhere in the email, and that you have not updated your contact details on the intranet. And, whatever you do, please do not give any indication of when I should call you - so that when I call you within seconds of getting your email you can say "now's not a good time". Keep me guessing - I love it and have nothing better to do.
Attachments
My work has a slightly off email set up. My inbox size is quite small - when it gets full email freezes and I can't send any emails until the next day. But there's absolutely no limit on the size of attachments. so please do follow the example of somebody a couple of weeks ago who send a video (the actual video, not a link. I don't know if it's a good or bad thing that they haven't heard of You Tube). The video was bigger than than my entire inbox. so, yeah, thanks for wiping out the main way that I, and the 100+ other people on the list, have to communicate and share documents with colleagues who work in other offices.
When sending revised or updated documents, make a special effort not to change the file name. It really is a lot of fun working out which the most up to date one is. A special gold star to those that send several attachments all with the same file name. I love you deeply.
