Urgent (red) emails - do you give them low priority?

All HR emails come through as urgent:

"URGENT: Anyone want to come and give a talk at Warwick campus?"

I don't think they realise that they need to put the urgency in the context of their audience, rather than their workload.
 
don't get them anymore but in my last job it was pretty bad

email marked as urgent, then a title like "URGENT, shortcuts missing from desktop"

Oh how quickly they went to the bottom of my job list :)
 
read receipts can be worth their 'weight' :p in gold.

example..

email from boss

"OMG WHY DIDN@T YOU TELL ME ABOUT THIS!!!!!!!!!!!!!11111"

reply, only by attaching the read receipt for the original message

pwned
 
Never been an issue. I'll use it if something is genuinely needs same day attention and likewise. But the general rule is, if something really is important then that person will call as well.
 
Possibly the only thing worse than "Red" emails are "Read Receipts" for every email :mad:

They are handy, but some people abuse them no end.
 
I just generally ignore emails in :/

650 unread in my inbox, don't get any spam either >.<

if the subject line isn't "your order is shipped" or something interesting it gets ignored.
 
My attention to the 'urgent' email flag depends on the sender. Serial abuses get no extra priority, but if it's from someone who rarely ever uses it, I'll stop everything else to check what's up.
 
Tefal said:
I just generally ignore emails in :/

650 unread in my inbox, don't get any spam either >.<

if the subject line isn't "your order is shipped" or something interesting it gets ignored.
Click to expand...

You should think about deploying a decent filter, so you only have to read the interesting ones.

I have one for bills..
 
First thing I do in any job is set Outlook to never send read receipts, because people don't understand that it's entirely possible for someone to read an email and then set it as a task to sort out the next day, and end up phoning you 5 minutes after the read receipt goes through asking what's going on.

Emails marked as urgent that are also nowhere near urgent are treated worse than 'normal' emails - I'm sorry but your failure to plan doesn't mean that I'm now going to treat you as a priority. This is usually done by HR types who forget they have someone new starting and send emails out requesting PCs/accounts at 6:30pm the evening before they start and then act surprised when there isn't anything ready for their new person the next morning.
 
To be honest I do treat them as high priority.

Never really worked for a company where it's abused, 99% of the time an email is simply 'sent' and if someone has taken the time to mark it as High Priority I generally accept it is.

And as for Receipts, again - always: it enables me to keep track on who's read an email and action against it, likewise I send receipts back so people are aware that I've, well, er, y'know, read it rather than an email coming 5mins later saying "Jason, did you get my last email?"
 
One of my colleagues punches his desk with rage if he receives an email with an exclamation mark through Lotus Notes.
 
Work tickets at an old job of mine had several levels of importance:

URGENT

MEGA URGENT

MEGA MEGA URGENT

MEGA MEGA MEGA URGENT

I could count the amount of jobs we got through that didn't say urgent on them each week on one hand, that's out of probably a hundred a week :/
 
! in Outlook normally means ignore unless it's something customer affecting.

If it's just some shlub trying to circumvent the ticket system, I'll gladly delete or put the time I would have spent in fixing his problem into writing a constructive reply about the great ticketing system we have. Something along the lines of "it's like a fair system to allow cases to be dealt with on a priority basis, a queue if you will."
 
For me it's the people who think that emphasising certain words in captials throughout an email is an acceptable way of making their point. Most of the time they get read out of context and **** me off.

I never notice the high priority tags in outlook, becasue I simply don't care. First come first served.
 
it is weird but i always look at low importance emails first as they are normally the interesting ones.

i.e. events and general fun stuff.
 
neil3k said:
yes

and also people who dont say please and thank you

goes straight to the bottom of my list.
Click to expand...

Emails that just say 'thank you' are a waste of time and effort, and I get annoyed when I receive them.

People that deliberately disregard emails flagged as important are running a risk of being **** on, depending on the sender of course.
 
Urgent emails don't tend to get given any more priority than any other, I'll normally read through them in order of receipt and determine for myself what is urgent and what isn't - sometimes the senders view coincides with mine, sometimes not.
 
the level of urgency is assessed and attributed by the reader not the sender. My trick is to follow the email with a call or visit to the recipient to ensure they understand the reason its urgent and coherse them into addressing it in the way I require.

If you send an "urgent" mail to more people than you can call/visit then its clearly not urgent.

There ends the lesson for today.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom