To hate it when a colleague replies to an email *copying in unrelated people*

[elemenopeee]

I've sent Susan a query. Nothing stressful, nothing concerning, just a straightforward question. Susan replies and copies in all manner of bosses and line managers.

Why do you do this Susan?

Firstly - if I wanted others to read my email to you I'd have copied them in.

Secondly - you are embarrassing me as the higher ups then feel they have to respond to me, and do. But it was a simple query, Susan, you should have found out the info yourself and got back to me. Now I feel like I'm wasting their time with a simple query.

I'm absolutely cringing with embarrassment.

That's nice of you. A unit where I work receives very important and urgent info, but has a policy of never replying

It's not about being 'nice' (or not!) - it's simply that a priority for you might not be one for me. If your work involves tasks which are time sensitive and require confirmation, then there must be a better way of addressing that than by asking for 'read receipts'. They are a clunky way of trying to impose one way of working on someone else who may work differently. If it's a regular thing that you need then an agreed protocol with fixed SLAs for action needs to be agreed. But on an ad-hoc basis it just doesn't work.

I get hundreds of emails during a week and I am often out at external meetings where I'm not going to be able to access them at all. Also, by sending a read receipt it implies that I've gone through the email thoroughly and know what needs to be done - whereas I tend to skim quickly, prioritise and then come back to things later.

If someone needs me to action something then they need to tell me. If it's time sensitive then I need to know when the deadline is. If it's urgent then I'd expect a phone call first to give me the heads-up rather than burying it in my inbox.

It smacks of “I want to know that you’ve got it so I can chase you up and demand you treat my email with a higher priority.”

Or, that they may be subject to capability proceedings and their manager has asked them to provide read receipts to support/refute allegations made.

I agree with a PP who noted the way things were done in ye olde days with memos and carbon paper. Everyone had their own designated area of responsibility and did their job and somehow we all managed to communicate to reach our goals. OK, there was always an argument for more efficiency and email certainly seemed to meet that need but this awful culture has grown up around it where people use emails as a form of instant messaging, get annoyed when you don;t respond within 10 minutes and copy in everyone who might have a passing interest in the subject matter, which means that inboxes are unmanageable, everyone is expected to stay connected 24/7 and workloads have grown massively.

I have two members of my team who insist on copying me, as their manager, into everything. I have spoken to them about this, put it in writing, brought it up at annual reviews, tried empowering them, empathising who great they are at their jobs and I trust them to do those jobs without me watching over their shoulders but to no avail - it just keeps happening. One just likes to keep me informed of what she is doing but the other is worse - she'll finish every single email with something on the lines of "I've copied Summer, my manager, here as she will likely have more advice to add". No, I don't but now I have to respond to say so and that can make me look dismissive of the whole thing. In these instances I'm being forced into micro-management which is not a style I want to adopt at all.

At my work they’ve really cracked down on unnecessary emails. We’ve been specifically told:
Don’t cc people unless it’s absolutely necessary. If you expect a reply from someone then include them in the ‘to’ section.
If you cc someone it is for information only, there is no expectation that they should reply or do anything.
Never use bcc, it’s rude and offensive.
Never send ‘all staff’ emails unless absolutely necessary. We’ve got all sorts of ‘group’ email addresses so there’s really no need for the ‘only read if this applies to you’ emails.

It’s actually cut down on loads of emails, and it’s a relief that if I’m cc’d on something I pretty much skim read it and then ignore!

It might be because she's part time. I work in a team of 3 part time staff. People will email one of us queries and we will always cc the other two in the reply, because we pick up the workload from each other through the week, and if we don't know what's been asked/said, we can't do that.

Invariably, our colleagues, who don't know quite how we work, will then simply 'reply' to the email, so we then need to cc the other two into the reply again to keep the chain going... It can be frustrating to make sure you've always got the whole message chain cc'd to all 3 in the team, but it's nothing to do with sneakiness or boasting.

Sounds like you need to set up a group email and inbox

t's simply that a priority for you might not be one for me. If your work involves tasks which are time sensitive and require confirmation, then there must be a better way of addressing that than by asking for 'read receipts

When the only tool you have is a hammer every problem looks like a nail. Email has become the lowest common denominator communication system. Can’t make Sharepoint or some other similar system work, and don’t like that new-fangled Office 365 or Google Apps? Email spreadsheets around, and sod the version control problems it causes. Need a workflow and approvals loop and don’t fancy buying the right tools? Email will do. Need to track tickets and apply an SLA and don’t want to buy Remedy? Email will do. Need an audited messaging system to ensure that you can communicate in teams but also meet your FCA obligations but the IT people have got some silly objection to Slack? Email will do. Need to notify people when automated jobs run, but find interfacing to Pushover or similar a pain? Email will do.

Email is a cheap, easy and shit means of communication.

Oh I love doing this to shit head collegues who ignore you until you cc in their manager

There are two people at work who are of same seniority as me who will not reply or act (email is a default method of requesting things here so it's not unreasonable to send those sort) unless you cc in their line manager. One is getting a bit better so may stop doing it but the other is notorious for avoiding/ignoring then lying about timeframes, details etc. I am hoping the manager is working on this but in the meantime I have to use what I've got available. Wouldn't do it to most people though, there's no need. We just cc line managers in for minutes of meetings as routine but that's an email a week per department, maybe two.

I hate being cc'd on emails where I'm not being asked to do something. I feel like adding this to my signature:

PLEASE ONLY EMAIL ME IF YOU REQUIRE A RESPONSE/ACTION.
DON'T RING ME EITHER.

loathe loathe loathe read receipts & refuse to send them on principle. Email senders with the exception of my direct manager don't get to decide my work priorities.

I skim emails first thing in the morning or when I have a short break between meetings. At those times I'm looking to delete the rubbish and deal with the priorities. If your email needs a considered reply, or information that I need to access, you will have to wait until I have time to answer you.

top email crime for me is reply-all when someone is trying to set up a meeting. Seriously, I don't care how busy you are - just reply to the meeting organiser!

top email crime for me is reply-all when someone is trying to set up a meeting

Why aren't they using the Outlook/Exchange Calendar to do this? Look at people's diaries, propose a meeting, let them accept or decline it.

Oh God don't get me started on the number of people who don't bother to check the scheduling assistant when arranging meetings.

In fairness, I think there is an assumption of general competency with Outlook etc., but people have generally learned on the job. Consequently their level of familiarity and competency is going to vary hugely. Similar to the recent thread on Excel - what I'd deem 'competent' is different to what someone else's definition might be.

Reflectant - very good point. It's a management issue as much as anything else. If the culture (or tools) aren't there then people are going to muddle along with whatever they can do themselves.

I have a distant colleague whose job, it appears, is somewhat on the line. She was a PA but the bloke left and they aren’t replacing him. She now spends all her time cc-ing people in. I think she is proving her worth and so it doesn’t bother me. I just click delete.

What DOES bother me is she has appointed herself to be the person who chases up all overdue paperwork. I don’t mind a reminder but she always BCCs in my boss. Except she doesn’t. She actually gets muddled every time. Instead of emailing me my reminder and BCCing him, she emails him and BCCs me! So I can see every time that she is snitching on me! He must wonder what on earth she is on about! So every time she emails me a snotty (and they are snotty) email, she doesn’t realise I can see he is copied in. My boss, it seems, doesn’t appreciate the emails about insignificant paperwork either.

I’m starting to wonder if I have this email system thing wrong!

I sound a right cow, I do actually chuckle because It really doesn’t matter. It does bring a smile to my face to see her BCC fail

Susan drives me up the wall and I feel like over worked with her all my god damn career

I learnt to send read receipts to cover my back as they denied having recieved a key email which put my job on the line. I now only ask for them on key emails that I need to know are read. ;)

Consequently their level of familiarity and competency is going to vary hugely.

And then we get the "digital natives" bollocks which assumes that young people are fully competent to design and use complex business systems because they have rapid-twitch muscle reflexes for Call of Duty.

I see the necessary cc's and raise you forwarded emails with no context.

I have a jr team member who kept forwarding me emails and chains with no message/context. I assumed it was to prove they'd done something and let them know it was unnecessary, they can just update the project on our system.

It continued, so I asked them not to forward emails, instead cc me in if it I really, really needed to be involved so at least I could search for the conversation by sender.

It's still happening, except now I get a sentence added, e.g. "deets about project XYZ". Today's 'deet' as found on the third email in the chain was that the person would be in at 8:30, 30 minutes before I start work. That was fun.

It's still happening, except now I get a sentence added, e.g. "deets about project XYZ"

If they haven't been with you two years, they have almost no employment rights. "Deets" is grounds for summary dismissal.

I had a client that sent through every email without a subject. Every single email she ever sent was blank - fine if I read it on the day but considering she sent me on average 5-10 emails a day regarding different things it became almost unmanageable in the end. I could never work out why she did it, she saw herself as very high up in the foodchain and I never worked out if she was just stupid and not very IT literate or is was some weird power thing. Was very weird.

I have a client who uses my services on a “white label basis” - so basically I do his work for his clients. Obvious he doesn’t want his clients to know he outsources to another company - all fine and do it a lot.

However this particular client is also very tight and doesn’t have a fucking clue what he’s talking about. Have offered to use an email set up under his brand name (doesn’t want to pay for the extra email). Yes he doesn’t understand the difference between cc and bcc - hence the very confused message from his end client “who are “ddogprob consultancy and why are you copying them into private emails” .... guess who he tried to blame and not pay!

It completely depends on the team's culture. I have been in teams where managers are never copied in and in teams where they always are.

If the senior people are replying, then they are not unrelated. The could always ignore. Surely it matters that you get your answer rather than who it is off. If you are embarrassed to be seen asking these questions because they are so straight forward, how come you are happy to waste this persons time responding to your queries? Is it because you should be find it out for yourself?

I work on one really large project with another project manager, so we CC each other in everything and our stakeholders do too (for the most part). That's fine, makes sense, we both need to know the same things.

Any other situation, unless there's a clear reason like 'Mallorie I'm CCing you because this covers the open question from yesterday's meeting' I just email the sender back directly to say 'I'm not clear why you've sent me this, is there anything I need to do here?'

It trains them right out of it.

I have to admit I have done what Susan is doing in the past. I was being bullied by a manager and I wanted it to stop. So when he sent me an unpleasant email, I replied cc-ing in my own manager and another senior person (who agreed on this strategy with me). The bully tried the arguments given here, but tbh, as much as he could decide who got his email, so could I decide who I sent email to. And if I wanted to send him an email including a load of other people, then that was my choice.

Not saying that Susan feels bullied by you, OP, more that there may be more going on than Susan just being over officious.

Oh god yes....I have someone senior to me who randomly copies in my line manager to emails she sends but only ones that appear to make her look good. I just laugh to myself. I’ve a good relationship with my own boss so I’m ok with it. I can see how devisive it comes across though.