I’ve been amazed at the Sony emails. Cracking racial jokes about Obama. Basically calling coworkers retards or crazy. Pretty surprising stuff for office email.
My employer had campus email when I started in 1986. It was based on the Vax 780 at that time. IIRC nearly all the email was from within our campus. From the very beginning I always treated emails like conversations in front of my bosses. I just assume anything I write could get forwarded to the dept head.
Email is a relaxed conversation. We do forward jokes, discuss projects etc. But I’ve never, ever seen a watermelon joke about Obama. Or seen any of my coworkers attacked and insulted in an email. Complaints about a lazy coworker that’s late on a project. Hell Yes. But, never any direct insulting attacks. Nobody that I work with is that stupid.
Have you ever contributed to or seen email conversations that made you uncomfortable? Ever wished you could reach out and pull back an office email?
I have seen correspondence with inappropriate humor. I have also seen correspondence which speaks derogatorily about other workers, but I don’t know that I’ve seen that person named within such correspondence. Still plenty enough identifying information for someone in the know, though.
I always compose emails (and texts) as if it will be seen by a wide audience, even though that is (likely) never the case. I write them with the assumption that everyone can be thoughtless sometimes and might forward it. Every time, even to people I otherwise trust. Even if I’m escalating something for air cover from my boss, I still frame the problem in a manner I’d be comfortable with if he sent it on to the “offender’s” boss. It’s a variation on the old Frank Rizzo tenet: “Never write a letter, and never throw one away.” Might seem paranoid, but I always assume that something recorded for posterity could come back and bite me.
My workplace is very (business) conservative, so I don’t recall ever seeing anything remotely controversial, but I suppose it must have happened at some point.
I’ve never seen a concerning email at work. But that’s because gossiping via email is so passé now that we’re able to IM each other. I have to admit that this is the primary way I get my snark on. Big Bro is no doubt watching, so I hope he has a sense of humor.
IM sure glad that’s not permanent. LOL Even then I’m aware of what I say. But IM’s aren’t for the boss to see.
I guess at some offices they say almost anything in email. Especially if its a small office with under 15 people. I wouldn’t make enemies by complaining or saying anything. I’d simply not comment on or contribute to inappropriate conversations.
Well, just today every single person on the University’s operating staff distribution list got an e-mail where someone decided to pontificate about our main campus being a hot bed of white privilege and a low number of minorities on campus pretty much means we’re all bad people, but only one person responded to that so I guess it’s not much of a conversation… I was uncomfortable that someone displayed such a stunning lack of common sense by sending that out to hundreds of people and I hope she gets in hot water over it.
The only thing that comes to mind was when my direct manager at a temp job (unsurprisingly, a truly awful temp job, largely because of said manager), decided that instead of facing the music for a project she forgot about, she would throw me under the bus to make herself look innocent to the other department head. Basically, Other Manager had asked her to do something for him, and some time later he’s asking why it hasn’t been finished; she writes him back, and copies me, saying she doesn’t know WHY it isn’t done because she’d given it to me AGES ago. This was, of course, the very first time I’d heard anything about it.
I wrote her back, privately, and very professionally, pointing out that she was, in fact, mistaken (although I already knew it was a lie and not a mistake). Her response was that it didn’t matter and I should just do the project now.
So I walked straight to the lobby, called the temp agency, and quit.
Ah yes, the preacher. That thinks a distribution list is for getting their message out. Whatever great cause they feel must be shared and supported. :rolleyes: We’ve had a few of them over the years. I didn’t think to include that in the OP.
Distribution lists can lead to hilarity anyhow. Just about everybody has replied to the list instead of a person. :o That can be rather awkward.
Worked at a libertarian think tank doing various clerical work right out of college. I know I know, but it was the only job I could find at the time. So one day one of the wonks sent out a company-wide email rallying everyone to join him in a counter-protest against the Million Mom March that would be happening that weekend. He called them Nazis and other colorful names. I was stunned that someone could be so childish, nevermind the unprofessionalism, in a supposedly professional office setting. I deleted and ignored the email. And kept my head down so no one would ask me about it, because I sure wasn’t going to spend my weekend with people who like to call others names like a five-year-old.
Nope. My emails could very easily be public, and I assume many will be read, so they are used for only formal correspondence and uninteresting everyday tasks.
Yeah. The time I was accidentally copied on a conversation started by a co-worker who speculated that I was taking time off of work to have infertility treatments.
Ha ha, fucker, I was taking it off because I was pregnant.
When I get IMs that have anything inappropriate I don’t respond. Every keystroke is recorded and I’m not risking the wrath of hr for being part of it. Now, I have gone in person to continue the chat…I just don’t need it electronically recorded.
But in my very first entry-level, high turnover, sweatshop job, someone once sent around a goofy email satirizing the boss’s control-freaky rules & procedures (not copying the boss himself.) I just snickered a little and then forgot about it. But a few days later, we were all individually summoned to the boss’s office and presented with a printout of the email, and asked to explain ourselves as to why we didn’t immediately report the sender to management. (Did I mention there was high turnover in this company?)
Never seen nor participated in anything of the sort. I’ve been fortunate enough to only ever really work at places where work email and messaging is understood to be for work and work only.
You wouldn’t send out a paper memo cracking inappropriate jokes or use the office photocopier to print off a couple dozen funny cat pictures; I don’t for the life of me understand why people think it’s okay to use digital resources like that.
I’ve had an email *about *me sent to me by mistake. In it, the co-worker in question (she was nuts - long story) was complaining to another co-worker that I was ignoring her/not including her in things. She was sat right opposite me as she sent it (and the intended recipient was sat right next to me), so it was definitely awkward. Before I could really register what the email was saying, she shrieked and ran out of the room - and didn’t come back to work until the next day.
In a sense it wasn’t nasty or malicious, at least certainly not explicitly. But I got the feeling that what she was really trying to do was turn the other co-worker against me.
I think it was as uncomfortable for me as it was for her. I sent her a one-liner asking her if perhaps we should grab a coffee or something to talk it out. We did - and things were (sort of) resolved.
Since then I resolved that whenever I sent an email, I would phrase it in such a way that I wouldn’t mind if anyone in the world read it (at least in tone, if not in content).
LC Strawhouse alludes to this–in some companies, there’s a stated duty for employees to bring ethical violations to the attention of their leadership. Just deleting the note is better than forwarding, but it can also bite you depending on the nature of the email. Particularly when you’re in management and especially if involves direct reports for which you’re a registered principal. “Failure to supervise” can get you fired.
Not exactly what the OP is asking for, but a couple of times I received outside emails from relatives, nastily sniping at each other (and I mean nasty and personal) about a divorce they were going through. I responded with a terse, “I cannot receive emails like this at work. Please stop” note, so that if anyone ever invoked the “work email is primarily for work” rule at me, the email trail would end with my reply.