[yshavurah] (no subject)
- From: Clevineys@xxxxxxx
- To: yshavurah@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Tue, 25 Feb 2003 21:12:47 EST
Hi Folks,
The following is an article published in the Wall Street Journal--some of it
is off topic, but I thought it made some good points about the dangers of
email communication--and thought the message (that we should be careful about
how we say what we say) was a timely one for our Havurah as we start to think
about possibly difficult issues such as email privacy, etc.
Take care,
Cheryl
CUBICLE CULTURE Workplace E-Mail Can Turn Radioactive In Clumsy Hands By
Jared Sandberg 884 words Feb 12, 2003 The Wall Street Journal Page B1
(Copyright (c) 2003, Dow Jones & Company, Inc.) SPECIAL DISPENSATION
should be given to people like Jodi Sedlock of Appleton, Wis., who spent
years in leach-ridden forests and dark caves with bats. Four weeks away from
completing her dissertation on bats, the former Chicago grad student still
hadn't written her final chapter and desperately needed constructive
comments from her adviser. She begged him for comments and waited in vain
all week for them. By Friday, she went home and added a few beers to her
sleeplessness, caffeine and fret. She poured her frustration into an e-mail
to her friend Nina. "Joel is such a b------," she wrote. "He hasn't given me
his comments." She sent it out, then went to sleep. When she awoke, she
found an e-mail at last from her professor. Her eyes drifted across her
Inbox and, to her still-raw horror, she saw the terrible words affixed to
his message: "Re: B------." Holy guano! She had inadvertently flamed the
boss. A forgiving and jovial man, he would ultimately dismiss the faux pas.
But all she could do was cry and laugh -- not a ha-ha laugh but "an insane
laugh," she says, "like a crazy woman." Workplace experts gasp, agreeing
with her self-assessment. Under no circumstances, they say, should you ever
mock the boss in e-mail. It can threaten your career, torch morale and
reveal your woeful unprofessionalism. BUT, BOY, IS IT FUN. In an often
upside-down work world, few things are as satisfying as a wicked e-mail
making fun of the boss. Says Roger Brunswick, a psychiatrist at the
management consulting firm Hayes Brunswick & Partners: "Ridiculing the boss
is a form of humor and a way of coping with the stress of work life that the
boss puts you under." The danger is that the very technology that enables
such delightful indiscretion can also betray you. Automatic e-mail
addressing and drop-down menus make it too easy to send an offending message
to the last person on earth who should see it. That threatens the integrity
of a time-honored office tradition: backstabbing. Perpetrators of this
slip have an unmistakable quaver in their voice even years later when they
tell about it, as if they had fumbled the pin of a career grenade. They have
visions of repelling down the face of their office buildings and crawling
through the ductwork to damage the boss's hard drive before he or she can
open the e-mail. Elizabeth Howell actually did that -- sort of. The former
human-resources receptionist for CNN was 22 years old at the time and full
of fury and spite for her boss. She composed an e-mail in which she called
her boss mean, crazy and evil and sent it to her receptionist friend
upstairs. Or so she thought. She quickly realized what she had done and her
heart began bobbing in her stomach. "I thought I was going to throw up," she
says. Luckily, part of her responsibility included checking her boss's
e-mail. She slipped into her office, deleted the tirade and vowed never to
do it again. "It really left a serious impression on me," she says gravely,
as if she were talking about a near-fatal bout with a bad oyster. Tech
engineer Andrew Green accidentally insulted a big customer when he hit the
dangerous "reply-all" button. The customer didn't speak English well, so he
had the further humiliation of having to explain to the man why he should be
insulted in the first place. Now, he calls Microsoft Outlook "Microsoft Look
Out!" So what to do when the deed is done? Workplace coaches suggest
'fessing up immediately, apologizing, and doing whatever you can to suggest
the e-mail was a one-time lapse in loyalty. HERE'S BETTER ADVICE:
Panic. But not so much that you make the bigger mistake of trying to use
that "Recall" feature in Microsoft Outlook. Introduced in 1997, the feature
was intended to help people unring an e-mail bell. But the feature works
only when both the sender and receiver have Outlook and the offending
message hasn't been viewed. Also, the recall notice must be opened first --
and Jupiter has to be aligned with Mars. Above all, the cancellation
notice from the sender just double-dares recipients to read the original
offending message. Marc Olson, group program manager at Microsoft, concedes
that "whatever is in that first message is now more important than it could
have ever been." Of the 8.3 trillion e-mails sent last year, how many were
boss-bashing missives? "We don't have an estimate for that," says Mark
Levitt, a vice president at International Data Corp., a technology-research
company. He guesses a percent of a percent -- or 830 million barbs. That
includes Christie Breen, a former Internet developer. She begged Rich
Ridolfo, then director of technical operations at Forrester Research, to
scrub a mistaken e-mail. Ms. Breen was asked by her boss to furnish a
"transition plan" for a new job at the firm. Instead, she sent her resume,
which she was circulating outside the company. Corporate policy didn't
allow Mr. Ridolfo to delete it, but he took Ms. Breen to Dunkin' Donuts for
consolation. Turns out he didn't have to. Her boss later thanked her for
sending the "plan." The e-mail was never even opened. --- E-mail me at
jared.sandberg@xxxxxxxx <mailto:jared.sandberg@xxxxxxxx> To see past
columns, go to CareerJournal.com. J0304200327
Cheryl B. Levine, Psy.D.
Clinical and Consulting Psychologist
Positive Perspectives, Inc.
680 E. Dayton Yellow Springs Road
Fairborn, OH 45324
(937) 390-3800
Behavioral Science Coordinator
"Mad River Family Practice:
Ohio State University Rural Program"
4879 US Route 68 South
West Liberty, OH 43311
(937) 465-0080
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.
--T.S. Eliot
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