Arsey emails at work

I tend to go to their desk (if in same office) or pick up the phone and speak to them, so I can find out what the issue really is, and often find out they aren't being arsey at all.

Also, in that string of emails, your initial email is the first to be arsey...
 
Dj_Jestar said:
I tend to go to their desk (if in same office) or pick up the phone and speak to them, so I can find out what the issue really is, and often find out they aren't being arsey at all.

Also, in that string of emails, your initial email is the first to be arsey...
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Here's some more arsiness for you...are you planning to tell us which of the many strings of emails in this thread you are referring to?
 
Being arsey != being assertive. :)

Don't demand the payments, explain that they are overdue, and the impact this will have (politely.) Offer assistance, even if you and they are fully aware you are not in a position to do so.

What you're doing at the moment is generating conflict, not resolution.
 
Dj_Jestar said:
Being arsey != being assertive. :)

Don't demand the payments, explain that they are overdue, and the impact this will have (politely.) Offer assistance, even if you and they are fully aware you are not in a position to do so.

What you're doing at the moment is generating conflict, not resolution.
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Tis, true. Whilst being assertive, arsey or whatever in the first instance, you set the base tone of conversation.

In my experience, the tone will remain the same or degrade further unless it is specifically picked up on - E.g. "No need to get aggro about it", "Why are you getting tetchy? Etc.
 
The worst email situation I ever had was like this.

Had a friend who was being talked down to by our (then) boss. Boss was a horrible women. Truely spiteful, head mistress style "you will do as I say" type. Well one day she was being particularly harsh to my friend. My friend got upset and down and I tried to chear her up by sending her an email taking the mick out of our boss. I went into detail about our Boss's pig face, mannerisms, general obesity and the fact that the whole office basically hated her. I clicked send satisifed that she'd be smiling in no time.
Walked over to her desk to read it with her as she opened it and it hadn't arrived. "Click send and recieve manually" I tell her. Still no sign. I wonder back to my desk and check my sent items...yep... sent it direct to the boss.

For some reason I cannot explain, I put our boss in the To field since she was obviously on my brain at the time.
I didn't bother to recall the mail. Instead I awaited my punishment but it never came. Funnily enough, I never heard anything back from her. Maybe it was a wake up call.....
 
I remember an old colleage was supposed to send an email internally which described the customer as "a stupid bint" but actually sent it to the customer. After trying to recall the email it transpired it was sent to her hundreds of times flooding her inbox. Poor guy had to call her to apologise in an open office with a hundred or so people in complete silence listening to it.

At my current company someone sent TES][1CLE to our entire database of about 40k people.

I dunno if i'm arsey or not in emails but I tend to be successful and resolves problems pretty quickly.
 
I've had a few incidents like this at work.

First was me politely asking, in respect of security standards and compliance requests to be informed of employee's termination of employment before their last day, so I can cancel their accounts and remote access accordingly.

The reply I got was basically

"Everyone's busy and I don't like your attitude."

Second was when I was asked to acquire, build, customise and distribute a brand new laptop to a member of staff being on call within a few hours.

Got a very sarcastic e-mail over the weekend saying how she couldn't access any websites, VPN didn't work and made comments such as "I need a computer that actually works" etc.

Had a look at the machine in question and the reason why she experienced the aforementioned issues was because she tried to establish a VPN connection straight after connecting to some bt openzone public wireless (which requires web logon). Rather than her home wireless network.

I replied back mentioning why she was experiencing issues, also mentioning that her comments were unacceptable and rude. Her boss e-mailed mine asking all his staff should e-mail respective line managers about issues like these. She obviously didn't and her e-mail was a direct attack on me.

Meh.
 
I became a victim of a spell checker with an email I sent out and copied to several people within the business.

I was referring to a new process that dealt with the updating of staff personal records and was going to be called the 'Human Resources Change Notice' or HRCN for short.

My email went something like...

Thank you for your message. We will continue to cleanse and reconcile the data within our database until the use of the HORN is rolled out across the business.

The responses I received did brighten up my day. :)
 
The latest consumer/bundle of joy to email me thought it would be appropriate to voice his concerns in a professional and reserved manner.

"wher the **** is the upload button *****"

I'm still plotting my response.
 
keep em coming some funnies in here making me chuckle :D The one to boss pigface that went direct to her instead of her friend is great, reminds me of the movie Wanted.
 
I worked in an office quite a few years ago now and was working on a project with a right idiot of an Oracle DBA, the guy was obnoxious and fairly clueless. His team leader was a friend of mine and one day I sent my friend an email commenting that this guy was an incompetent cretin (which he was) ... unfortunately the email discussed a few other things which we bounced backwards and forwards between us and my friend ended up forwarding it to this guy forgetting what was at the start of the chain .... didn't go down well.

Have had a few other times when I have ended up having a go at people, normally due to their stupidity, e.g. trying to avoid documented change control processes because they though they were "above" it or trying to blame us for things going wrong (fortunately I had LOTS of nice evidence that we had done exactly what they had requested and they had subsequently screwed up).

Never been in any real trouble for doing it (although I am careful not to be that way towards external customers).

On the subject of emailing people you sit with (or people you can just speak to) ... we do that a lot as it gives an audit trail and allows us to manage expectations on what will be done and in what timescale.
 
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edscdk said:
that sort of reply is an example of exactly what NOT to do, if he has already had cause to complain he now as a arsey email from you...

a better reply would be

"sorry to trouble you again, be we need to get your PC swapped out today to keep the project on time, if you could let me know a convient time to swap the machine over I could be much appreciated"..

you got a good reply from him, however it could have very easily gone horribly wrong... what if he had taken offence and asked you to leave?

lawyers are be total arses I did a lot of installs for them...
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This man speaki the truth lawyers are have such big egos and think they are the worlds number one humans!
 
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