Opening work emails up

[HoneyFlowers]

Does anyone else do a "oh my god, let's dart and hide" when loading up work emails?

@ClaudiaWankleman

I'm on maternity leave. I haven't been in work since March 2021. I didn't know my last day was going to be my last day - I did not put out of office on. How many emails will I have when I go back in may ?!

You can safely do a 'delete all'.

I delete all after any holiday. Anything important will get flagged to me.

Another hot tip is to occasionally delete all, delete them from your bin, and claim ignorance. Again, only the really important stuff gets chased.

My company is the worst because we all get CCd on everything. Projects I’ve never worked on and will never work on. Projects I consulted on once, three years ago. Can I come off this CC list? No. Aaargh.

I have set times thru the day to deal with email.. so people fucking Teams message me instead! I HATE that! It feels much harder to ignore. Rude.

I delete all after any holiday. Anything important will get flagged to me.

I'm always in awe of the brave out of office responses: 'Your email will not be read. Please resend it after XX/XX/XX'. A powerful move.

Actually no. I like checking my e-mails as a way of procrastinating about doing difficult work. You can feel very productive by dealing with lots of e-mails very quickly. And feel extra good when your in-box is almost empty. Even though both are an illusion and not good ways of prioritising your time.

Plus I use my work e-mail for personal stuff too so sometimes there are nice things in there.

@DoYouRememberTheInnMiranda

Totally. Sick feeling in my tummy when I see them come in

I don’t mind emails as can just get to them in in my own time.

It’s calls for me, if it’s not an arranged call I’ll always think (or say if I’m WFH) what does he/she want now?) and can’t help the dreaded feeling in my stomach that I’ve done something wrong - even though I know I haven’t! So stupid!

😬☺️

But we don't use emails internally.

How do you communicate with your colleagues? Teams?

The nature of the work I do means that we need to use email. We are always sending attachments and links to WeTransfers. We also use Outlook to set meetings up on the calendar.

Some of you would get sacked from where I work. It would soon get noticed that emails get deleted/not replied to.

Ahh no I love emails, if I've ever got a meeting or don't want to be distracted I close Outlook. It's virtual meetings I hate, I find myself so nervous for some reason 😩

@user1471604848

I work for a global company, so in the morning when I login, there could be over 100 emails. Also many slack messages. It takes me an hour every morning to sort through them, reply to quick ones, take actions etc. I frequently have meetings in the evening (just off a call now), but no matter how late I work, there's always a flood of emails in the morning. My favorite days are US holidays - no emails/meetings! So plenty of time to catch up on my work.

I hate slack, I don't know why I just find it doesn't quite work in the way it's intended to. I don't mind emails though, much prefer them to phone calls!

I hate slack, I don't know why I just find it doesn't quite work in the way it's intended to. I don't mind emails though, much prefer them to phone calls!
For me it’s the fact we have messages on Slack AND Teams, and calls on my phone AND Teams AND Zoom (just pick one FFFS), AND endless emails and it’s just relentless, then you’re asked where the work is – how can I get any done when there’s a “reply to this” expectation?

I deeply miss my old role which was entirely Jira tickets and I got perhaps one all-company email a day that made a nice change.

What is Slack?

I also hate Slack

@heelforheelandtoefortoe

Does anyone also spend hours writing and rewriting emails to sound less "pissed off"?

hahahaha yes me! I often have to tell people I can't action their (pointless) request because I have 7,324 things higher up the list both in terms of importance and urgency, and have to find ways to say this that sound nice and not arsey.

Is it just me who gets a weird kind of pleasure when I write "the computer says no" to unreasonable requests?