Work Rants

At our institution, we have Microsoft Exchange for email. In know we should dump it for Google products, for the price alone, but that is neither here nor there. I am amazed at how many people do not keep their schedule in Outlook, even people who spend significant time in meetings. Not because there are lots of people; I am amazed by how inconsiderate it is. Plus, it forces people to send out emails like this: President Gigamass has charged us with addressing our issues with packing bags of meat. Consultants are available to meet with this group on Jan 8th at 5pm  Jan 10th at 4am Feb 29th at noon Please reply to me by yesterday and let me know which of these days are best for you to meet with the meat packers. Why do we do this? If you might ever be in a meeting, update Outlook or face the consequence of missing out on critical discussions because you never put that pelvic exam on your calendar. And BTW Outlook, quit changing my memory of the past. When I attend ...

Ack! The sky is falling! Donkeys are on fire! Children cannot find their mommy! So, I sent this message with high importance!  !  Blark! Almost every single message I get flagged with high importance is not important to me. It might be important to the person who sent it, but importance is subjective. In my opinion, if a message is not time sensitive in a relatively short time period, and it is not critical to either me or my bosses, it is not important - period. And, of course, important things are rarely urgent and urgent things are rarely important. Do not send me a meeting request with barely a title, much less an agenda, and is scheduled a month from now, marked as urgent. It just isn't. The option I do like to use, which I seem to be alone in using, is the low importance option. Some of us already consider all email to be low importance. But, I find this option to be a courteous indicator to the recipient that I am not trying to push my interpretation of importanc...

I just revised a sentence in an email by replacing the word "complaining" with "reporting." As in, ".... so, when user are complaining reporting that things are not working ...." Tee Hee Hee