Jan 30 2008
Think Before Hitting “Send”
Before e-mail, written communications were almost never sent to the wrong people. After all, a letter had to be folded up, placed in an envelope, and then the envelope had to be addressed by hand or typewriter before it could be stamped and dropped in the nearest mailbox. This all took time, and in the time it took, even the dimmest letter-writer had ample opportunity to make sure he was sending his love letter to Charlotte and not Ralph.
Now that e-mails have replaced letters, things have changed. The potential of embarrassment in the world – even unmitigated danger – has skyrocketed.
Why? Because you now live in the era of e-mail, when “Reply,” “Forward” and “Attach” buttons are a mere mouse-click away, and “To” fields can be populated just as quickly and easily. Sure, it’s all very fast and convenient – but the time between finishing your e-mail and shooting it off irrevocably, irretrievably and immediately to someone has shrunk to a heartbeat. It’s in that heartbeat that mistakes – sometimes huge mistakes – are made.
For example, the CEO of a large corporation asked the company’s human resources director to send her a spreadsheet listing the salary and bonus earnings of everyone in the organization. By mistake, the HR director attached the sensitive spreadsheet file to the Christmas party invitation he had just composed and sent it out to all employees in every branch. It was his last official act as HR director.
And then there was the employee who missed an important meeting because she ran a personal errand. When her boss e-mailed her later to ask why she hadn’t come, and expressed his annoyance with her absence, she decided to forward his e-mail to her friend. In it, she wrote, “Can you believe my boss? He’s the biggest *@#!!**# on the face of the earth!” Unfortunately, she then made a big mistake: she hit “Reply” rather than “Forward.” When her boss, rather than her friend, received the e-mail, he quickly fired her.
The moral of the story? Take a few deep breaths before sending your e-mails. Make sure you’re sending the right messages with the right attachments to the right people. Unlike letters, you won’t have time to think things over on the way to the mailbox.
Special Note: Send Me Your Problems!
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Great post - this is so entirely true.
There is a new company out there called Sendside Networks (I have no affiliation aside from knowing about them). It’s basically like FedEx for email in comparison to the postal service. You can take back emails (you really can) and also make it so that a person only has say 20 or 30 seconds to read the email from the time they open it. It is very cool and I recommend it to everyone like me who tends to send regretful emails occasionally.
http://www.sendside.com
Mark Newman
Steve:
You can also get nailed even when you do think first. At one job my relationship with my supervisor was deteriorating. He sent me an e-mail asking about “project X” and CCd it to the VP above him and the company president. I had good news about “project X” so I put that in an e-mail and hit reply all. I didn’t want the bastard to filter my news.
The next day I found myself in H.R. and being asked to sign a form saying I messed up by replying to the company president and that I acknowledged the infraction. Apparently she doesn’t have time for technical e-mails and I should have known better.
I refused to sign it. I told my supervisor that if he didn’t want me to e-mail the president he should have BCCd her in the original message. And no, I wasn’t aware I wasn’t supposed to e-mail the company president. The H.R. manager was clearly uncomfortable with the situation.
Clearly I needed to bail and started sending my resume out, but the bastard fired me the following week before I could get out of there. I was so relieved I neglected to negotiate my exit. I should have asked if they’d let me quit.