Unfortunately, there are people who get annoyed at the slightest little thing. It’s as if *not *being annoyed by something creates some cognitive dissonance in them that they have to resolve by dreaming up things to be annoyed about.
I don’t normally play the game of “Well, you think you got it bad, let me tell ya…”, but really, I am envious of those who have the time to get annoyed by easily deletable emails.
To be fair, quite a few people have experience with United Way charity drives, where they do beat you over the head and engage in every dirty trick they can think of short of actually threatening to terminate your employment to get you to donate. That’s what posters are responding to when they sneer at a charity drive, even when it’s made clear that yours isn’t nearly so aggressive.
ALSO HURRR RR
I thought the brunt of her annoyance was that you were advertising for a charity in another country instead of in the US, not necessarily that US-based job creation was the central theme. She did happen to bring up a valid point. It makes sense to advocate providing running water to people who lack it in our own country first. However, based on the other info you provided about her, it seems like she’s saying the right thing for all the wrong reasons (in which case it was probably incidental to her point). Teabaggers can fuck themselves right in the anus.
I do think there should be an explicitly-stated, impassive opt-out feature attached to these types of mailing lists. Be realistic, nobody in a corporate culture (except this one nutter apparently) would EVER DARE to complain about receiving charity emails. There’s a huge annual United Way drive where I work, and I really wish there was a way to opt-out of the propaganda. The people who work in your office probably don’t know they can opt-out without looking like huge scrooges, you really should tell them explicitly if that’s an option.
There’s a real easy way to opt out of a simple weekly email: set up a filter/rule. It takes as much effort on the recipient’s part as it does to ask the sender to stop including them in the distribution list, and it’s more likely to work.
I actually don’t see why people hate work sponsored charity drives. I get to both give to a charity I’ve chosen, and help my employer out with their goals at the same time. And, often, there’s some type of matching, so I’m actually giving more. It seems like a win-win to me.
What reason besides pure emotionalism do you have to not want to help charities through you work?
Well, of COURSE you’re a commie pinko Obamumunist! You’re black! All black people are Obamumunists, except for the Tea Party’s/Republicans’ hand-picked “good” blacks, like Michael Steele or Ken Blackwell or [del]Alvin Greene[/del]Alan Keyes.
The gist of her little screed is that we shouldn’t raise money for foreigners, we should raise it for needy Americans… and then not give it to them, either.
You’ve given her opinion far more consideration than it deserves.
I really don’t think that a business (and state businesses ARE actually a business, or at least a workplace) email address should have anything directed to it other than business related emails. If the receptionist is delighted that she found her lost earring, then that’s a personal matter, it shouldn’t be the subject of a company wide email. Who really cares about this? I should hope that the entire company wasn’t worried about her earring. If an email can be deleted, unread, then that email shouldn’t have been sent.
And this is a big part of what I object to. In just about any job, if there’s a team building exercise or a charity drive, participation is NOT optional. If a worker wants to be promoted, or even retained, s/he’d better show up at that exercise or donate to charity. People who don’t do this are considered to be not team players.
I’d be OK with the emails if the OP had asked everyone, at the beginning of the drive, if they wanted to receive these inspiring little messages twice a week, and then sent the emails only to those who actually wanted them. She mentions that her division has 64 people…what if everyone sent an email a couple of times a week, on their personal projects?
Frankly, I think that the goal of providing potable water is a great one, no matter if it’s in the US or in a foreign country. But repetitive emails about a charity drive IS annoying.
After all, just about all spammers say “Well, you can always use the delete button” about their emails. Why should the recipients HAVE to set up a filter for this issue?
Monstro has already stated that she is more than happy to remove people from the list if they so desire. The fact that no one has tells me that no one cares enough about it. The real outrage should be saved for poor souls like me who get deluged with 70+ emails a day from campus clubs that can’t be bothered to use distribution lists and so just use the function to send email to the entire student body which I can’t opt out of. Now that is suffering.
But do people know that they can ask her to remove their address from her list without consequences? Does she let them know that they CAN opt out? This is, after all, an agency-wide drive, and people who ask to be removed frequently find that they have also been removed from the team player list, too.
This sort of optional email should be strictly opt in. There should be ONE email at the start, stating the purpose of the emails and asking people to reply if they want to receive more emails about the subject. And it should be sent BCC, there should be no option to reply to all.
Um, most of the people in my group KNOW me personally. They have worked with me for three years. They know exactly where I am on the totem pole…barely at the soil-air interface. The people who do not know me could probably guess that’s where I am since they don’t know me. And an easy search through the employee directory would tell them my job title, which does not contain either “manager” or “supervisor”. Everyone knows I’m a peon who just happened to be suckered into volunteering for a task no one likes to do. Every year it’s a different sucker. If you’ve been working there long enough, you know this.
So if they’re worried that there would be some ramifications if they asked not to get emails, they’re probably worried about a whole lot of things and need to get professional help.
Yeah, this is stupid. Sorry, I like you, Lynn. But I have 60+ people on my roster. It’s my job not only to dream up ways to raise money (like the whole charity spiel thing every week), but also to send out announcements about agency-wide events, let them know where they can do drop off whatever forms they have, and keep them informed about the progress of the campaign. I can just imagine if people decided they didn’t want to be on the list and then I get a tirade of emails from people saying, “WHY AREN’T YOU IN YOUR OFFICE SO I CAN DROP OFF MY DONATION FORMS!!!” or “HOW COME NO ONE TOLD ME THERE WERE HOT DOGS BEING SOLD ON THE SECOND FLOOR!!!” or “HOW COME I DON’T KNOW WHAT CHARITIES WE CAN GIVE TO!!!” It would most certainly happen. It would be much easier, if someone has that much of a problem with the whole thing, for THEM to just press delete if the subject line of my message offends them so much, than for them to opt out of a mass emailing that may actually contain information they care about.
We have some crotchety old folks in our division…the type of people who don’t mince words. They have said either said nothing about the emails or have given me props (through the dreaded email) for “setting a good tone”. For someone doing this for the first time, that’s a meaningful compliment.
I agree with you on the last point, but must correct you about the other. It’s not a valid point. All the charities that we are allowed to donate to through this drive are US-based. Water For People may work internationally, but it hires Americans and is no doubt headed by an American. And even if it was a foreign charity, so what? There are thousands of other charities that we can donate to that are not only American, but based right here in Richmond! As I told her in my response email, I’m not trying to push one particular charity on anyone. I’m only highlighting how far our money could go for a charity that I’ve randomly selected out of the whole list of charities that receive funding through the drive.
People can either fill out a pledge card and donate to their own favorite charity or just direct it to"general fund". And/or they can donate to a group collection (this is where the raffle comes in) that will go to the state-wide fund, which I’m assuming will be meted out to groups on a case-by-case basis. So it’s possible that a group like Water For People would receive funding from us even if people haven’t explicitly chosen that group on their pledge card. I’m sure the idea that this would happen…that her money might actually touch a charity trying to provide drinking water to poor people in third-world countries…probably drives this woman nuts. If that’s the case, she should not donate at all and save her money for her local “Save the American” club. But why can’t she just do that without being an ass?
My company is in the middle of its annual United Way drive right now, and it’s not like that at all. They send us a bunch of e-mails and sometimes leave printed materials on our desks in the morning. That’s it. There’s been no communication from any of the bosses about it, no threats or guilt trips of any kind.
I choose not to donate to the United Way, so I delete the e-mails and discard the flyers without comment or fanfare. What the heck would be the point of getting annoyed about it?
Why should they HAVE to tell monstro to take them off her list? She should be able to read minds, dammit! Non-sarcastically: It amounts to the same thing either way. Same amount of effort, same result.
I’m not a big fan of charity drives and advertisement either, and IMO the best course of action would have been to not do it at all. But it’s going to happen both because it clearly does work to a certain extent and it’s been ordered by the boss, so an employee can either stress and rage about the principle of the thing or make the bad emails go away and get on with their day.
About the only thing a filter doesn’t accomplish is give monstro and her superiors an idea of how many people dislike the charity drive. But then again, if they get sufficient donations from the people who do like it, the ones who don’t are arguing from a position of significant weakness.
The potential gains from receiving an extra $5 in donations far exceeds the mild annoyance of having to delete an email asking for them. Why would anybody care? It’s like two extra mouse clicks.
In this case, I’m assuming Monstro in referring to the receptionist finding an earring and sending out a company email looking for its owner. Not that she’s a crazy person who wants the whole building to know how happy she is about finding her lost jewelry.
Monstro, why do you hate America?
I think you’re doing a great job at one of the least liked positions anyone every gets put into that’s in addition to their regular duties. I personally don’t like the big Annual Charity drives, I’ve worked places where it really was necessary to contribute to stay employed. (Not officially, but everyone knew.) Also, I’ve seen ‘volunteers’ for the United Way and other big groups that really do the hard sell. The biggest objection I have is the large (IMHO) percentages of the money that go to ‘Administrative expenses’. I suppose that’s the nature of the beast, but I prefer to do more things locally and in person to avoid the overhead. If I volunteer at the City Mission, I can provide work that they might otherwise have to pay for. If I give canned goods/peanut butter/cereal to the local food bank and help for an afternoon with the sorting and storage of the results of a big donation drive, that goes so much further than what I could afford to donate. Anyway, good on ya for what you’re doing.