I think the guy from the Oatmeal lives inside my head, or at least that his head is in a pretty similar place to mine. Here’s a list of emails not to send, and elements of email to stop using. I fought long and hard to have email signatures kept to a minimum and spam free in my workplace. You should too. Nobody ever reads a footer and thinks “oh, ok then, I’ll go to your expensive event”…
Dear “Urgent” requester,
I understand that you want me to do something urgently but the fact that you write “urgent” on an unsolicited email does not (unless you are my boss or you are responsible for a significant amount of my funding) – make your request urgent.
If you send it to me between 4.30pm and 5pm when I am watching the clock I will be likely to treat it with the contempt it deserves.
Perhaps if the job is so urgent it is your planning process that needs timely revision.
That is all.
You know what I hate, people who write emails to me an carbon copy (CC) other people in on them. Not group discussions – just emails asking me to do stuff and showing everybody else that they’ve asked. That means when I refuse to do said stuff I need to provide my rationale to a wider range of people than would otherwise be the case.
I particularly hate it when someone CC’s my manager into something as though that is a tacit endorsement from my manager of the task this individual is asking me to do. It’s not. And I won’t do it on principle. Then I have to go to my manager and say – “disregard that email, the person is a twit”, or find out that I should in fact do the task for said twit. It would be easier to just send an email to me asking if I’ll do something, or send an email to my manager asking to get me to do something. It saves us all unwanted hassle and stress.
That is all.