To be fed up of emails from the office jobsworth?

[Ribrabrob]

I have a colleague who recently got a kind of promotion. When I say kind of, I mean she made up a job and the managers like her so that’s her new job now fair enough!

She used to be likeable but the new role seems to have gone to her head, she Is such a jobsworth. That’s fine, take your role seriously but... the emails! She’s literally sending 100 a day (no joke). Some are important (maybe less than 10) whereas others she’s very clearly sending them just for the sake of it. Many of them don’t require a response but she’ll get moody and passive aggressive if she doesn’t get a response in a timely manner.

She’s not my manger and we are equal levels.

Aibu to say something? It’s clogging up my inbox and they are just pointless. Or should I just suck it up and start a special folder for her pointless drivel?!

Whilst we are here - does anyone else have any tails of the office jobs worth? I’ve recently got back into office life and now remember my love hate relationship with it!

Don't delete them! Keep them as evidence. Is it actually a 100 a day?

Another vote for leave all of them to the end of the day and then mass reply. She will be absolutely flooded with the replies and it may make her realise how many she's sending.

Alternatively

"Hi Jobsworth,

I'm finding the number of emails you're sending in a day overwhelming; it's likely I'm going to miss an important message within the pile.
Could you limit them to a handful in the day please? It'll save us both a lot of time."

@boxingdayagain

I'd just reply every single one with "Noted"

Lol, yes and just set up a rule that automatically emails the response

agree, get an automatic reply.
thank you for your email.

Do you have weekly or monthly one to ones with your manager? This is a great time to being this up. 100s of emails a day is a complete waste of your time if they don't actually say anything, or if only a small % are actually valuable. Sounds like she's making a job for herself, or trying to justify her existence

Reply at the end of the day 'thank you for your 96 emails today, all of which are noted'

@sergeilavrov

You can auto reply to one person if you’re on outlook, probably a way with gmail too, depending on your work’s email platform. I’d just set up a really sunny, lovely reply so she’s happy the first time she gets it, and then angry when she gets the same one every time.

We have a guy who sends emails twice a month about people ‘snack sifting’ instead of grabbing a random selection, which leaves imbalanced proportions of options left as the month goes on... no amount of explaining can get him to understand people might not like every celebration in the tub. I started to eat office snacks just to sift and worsen the problem. His explosions on the topic are great. His other pet peeve is teaspoon hoarding, after he aggressively stirred his tea with a soup spoon and chipped his mug.

I love how people can get so worked up about minor things that they will email their fury in glorious detail. Reminds me of being in halls of residence at university and the president of the student Union put posters up everywhere because someone had stolen his margarine 🤣 He wrote “your president’s margarine has been stolen!” followed by a rant about it. Pompous about how his margarine mattered more because it was his. I didn’t know anyone who liked margerine, but after that point people sent him ransom notes and photos of margarine tubs in various locations when they returned home for summer, writing as if the margarine had gone on holiday to escape the boredom of his fridge.

@GalleryGirl

Alternatively

"Hi Jobsworth,

I'm finding the number of emails you're sending in a day overwhelming; it's likely I'm going to miss an important message within the pile.
Could you limit them to a handful in the day please? It'll save us both a lot of time."

Yes to this ^ I would also add...due to the volume please highlight the key message / request in bold. also the rule so you reply a one word answer to each one in a block, see how she likes it.

@BluebellsGreenbells

I would open an email and respond at the end of the day

1 thanks for the info
2 noted
3 will send report tomorrow
4 noted
5 thanks for the information

6 not sure this applies to me
7 again noted
8 ask Jeff that’s his department
9 there are cups in the cupboard already
10 thanks for the info
11 I’ll mention it to Sarah next time I speak to her
12 ....

See how annoying you can be without being unprofessional

I think this is the best idea so far. I would probably suggest to reply to them in bulk twice a day at first, with the type of replies in this post. Maybe just before lunch? And then just before rap? Ignore any follow-ups in the interim unless you think it is an urgent enquiry. I would also not apologise for the delay, Just ignore the follow-up.

I don't understand all this passive/aggressive rubbish.
Just do what I did with the office jobsworth and tell her in no uncertain terms to stop her shit.
It works.

Is she a Compliance Officer/Manager by any chance? In my experience, that's where most of the "jobsworth" type of emails come from.

Unfortunately, the whole raison d'etre of a compliance role is to remind/nag/reinforce /check and ensure compliance with all the various regulatory requirements under which businesses have to operate. It's not the sort of job for anyone who likes to be popular!

I would reply to her last email of the day, attach all the other emails sent that day and reply to them all on one email in bullet point format and copy in her manager.

Do you have department or office meetings? If so, put "Use of internal emails" on the agenda and have a discussion about how sending multiple emails is inefficient for both the sender and receiver and people should normally limit internal emails to not more than two a day. If you can, line other people up to say "Yes, there are SOME people who seem to send me 30 emails a day whilst other efficient people send a fraction of that, maybe we should do an analysis of who is using emails excessively and why".

I'd set up two rules:

1. All emails from her go into a folder which you never look at
2. A reply to any email from her is automatically sent. Doesn't matter what it says ("Noted" is fine).

She's happy, you're happy.

I would stay away from the passive-aggressive suggestions (funny though they are). If you used to get on OK, I wouldn't blow this professional relationship up, but YWNBU to call a meeting with her to discuss the issue.

@sergeilavrov

You can auto reply to one person if you’re on outlook, probably a way with gmail too, depending on your work’s email platform. I’d just set up a really sunny, lovely reply so she’s happy the first time she gets it, and then angry when she gets the same one every time.

We have a guy who sends emails twice a month about people ‘snack sifting’ instead of grabbing a random selection, which leaves imbalanced proportions of options left as the month goes on... no amount of explaining can get him to understand people might not like every celebration in the tub. I started to eat office snacks just to sift and worsen the problem. His explosions on the topic are great. His other pet peeve is teaspoon hoarding, after he aggressively stirred his tea with a soup spoon and chipped his mug.

When I worked in a hospital pharmacy, we started chaining the teaspoons to the water pipe to stop them disappearing.

Are you in CC OP?
If so, set up a divert rule with a polite “Thank you for your Email. As I am in CC I have sent this mail to a folder which is only looked at once a day.”
If she’s sending YOU 100+ Emails a day, “ Dear Jobsworth,
The number of Emails you are sending me daily is excessive, and I am unable to handle each enquiry from you along with my actual work. Please organise your enquiries in a more efficient way, to enable me (and others) to be able to spend the appropriate time on answering you.
Best Regards,
OP”
...and copy your Manager in

I forgot, Just for fun, for the most annoying jobsworth, I have a Moron Alert flag pop up - makes me smile/roll my eyes every time...

Could you politely suggest, while you understand that she needs to keep people informed/in the loop, in the interests of operational efficiency it would be better if she could send fewer, but portmanteau emails covering several topics at once. Call it a weekly update or something like that. This would also make it easier for you to reply as you could just annotate her email as necessary.

@CuthbertDibbleandGrubb

In challenging this, perhaps observe that something that really does require an answer will have more chance of being missed because someone thinks it is from her and not important.

This is a good idea. It’s a bit boy who cried wolf in a way

@BluebellsGreenbells

I would open an email and respond at the end of the day

1 thanks for the info
2 noted
3 will send report tomorrow
4 noted
5 thanks for the information

6 not sure this applies to me
7 again noted
8 ask Jeff that’s his department
9 there are cups in the cupboard already
10 thanks for the info
11 I’ll mention it to Sarah next time I speak to her
12 ....

See how annoying you can be without being unprofessional

That’s a good idea too

Is it really 100 a day? That’s an email every five minutes. How is she finding the time to do her own work?

I think the direct approach is best. “The volume of emails you send me is overwhelming and is impacting on my ability to concentrates and work effectively.”

Is she sending this many to other people?

I used to get annoying emails from staff asking me to track things down for them when they had the facilities to it themselves, highly annoying and time consuming for me so I started blind cc-ing in their line manager in my response, it stopped after a week. He was sick of all my emails so I told him to sort his staff out! Maybe cc in your manager with this inane crap?