If I would start to name all the annoying things related to my work, you could bet that after 20 years of work experience in a corporate world this list would be of a decent length. But there are a couple of them that would always top this list.
Meetings that start, run and pass with an enigma in the form of “why am I invited to this?”
Powerpoint slides with content density higher than the population of Mumbai.
My name in a cc section of an email that circulates between two or three responders back and forth. Especially those with the same cc section being extended with a new name every now and then.
Here I would like to touch upon the last point.
Last week I casually commented to one of my team members how I really don’t get the point why people have the urge to include me in a cc of every single email. Especially those that refer to the subject that is really nothing related to me. She agreed and even pointed out how the last round of this specific email exchange was including a new person on the list. Someone who definitely did not have anything to do with the topic.
We laughed about it, concluded how some people really don’t use their brains and parted towards our working stations.
5 minutes later a reply in this marathon email exchange appeared in my mailbox. Team member that just a few minutes ago was discussing the pointlessness of this type of correspondence was responding. To all people included in the list, including the one she herself pointed out as someone who should not be among recipients.
I gave her a ring to check why she did it.
“I don’t want someone to be upset if I all the sudden remove them from the email list…” was the answer that I got.
Upset? Who the hell would be upset for being taken out of the spam mailing list?
There are days when I get around 50 emails of this type. If a day is good, I get less than 5 of them. On some other days, I get an email with a simple text message “looping Dunja” accompanied by a body of text so long that my finger hurts from just scrolling it down. And I not only despise but truly hate it.
Why? Because I see it as a sign of disrespect.
Lack of accountability.
Lack of professional maturity.
And a complete absence of the conversational culture.
Imagine if this were the modus operandi prior to email being invented…
Sending a fax addressed to a specific person on 10 another numbers. Oh, I'm ooping them just in case. I don't want the to miss the news.
Giving a call to one person and then dialing another 10 persons afterwards. Just to keep them informed.
Sending the pigeon with a message to a leader of a distant Kingdom. Then releasing 10 more pigeons from the cage to send the message to the random recipients around the globe. Maybe it would be interesting for them to know about it.
It wouldn’t make much sense, right? Then how come that the casual adding of someone's name in a cc without a single common sense consideration became a norm in an email operated world?
“Please don’t forget to put me in cc when you send that email.”
Said someone. Probably. Never. Ever.
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