E-mail Can Get You Fired

The big problem with email is that people will say things in an email that they would never say to someone face to face. Plus, once you send it, there is a record. I like to pretend that I'm talking with the person before I send it. (Or I find an anonymous emailer and blast them, but that's another story )

 

The problem here is that people tend to forget who owns the computer, and why they are there.

When I was in my other world, I had problem employees then who would abuse the phone. I can only imagine the problems now with them having internet and email there. Thankfully, I now longer have to deal with them. It was like grade school with some of them.

 

A few years ago I was in sales at a start-up telephone and Internet provider. One of my colleagues replied to a company-wide email complaining in very descriptive terms about the sender, an Executive V.P. of the company. He replied via "Reply All".



That reminds me of another incident years before when I was working for an oilfield service company. A co-worker there was describing in vivid detail what he would like to do to the region manager's extremely attractive wife. He didn't realize that our "local" radios were being picked up by repeater stations and being transmitted to the region manager's desktop unit, several hundred kilometers away.