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OT - Annoying emails (Follow up to Eff off Fridays)

Drac0's picture

What follows is what my inbox gets flooded with in a typical week. What is in italics is what I wish I could write back.

“The owner of a Toyota Corolla, License plate 564YR6. Your lights are on”
“Someone left a Blackberry in the second floor washroom.”
“Anybody seen a Fed Ex Package addressed to Mr. Smith?”

Okay, I understand the concept of trying to do a good deed, but you would think my company is populated by people who forget to put on clothes in the morning.

“This email is a friendly reminder that the company has a dress code (see attached PDF). Certain people have not been following it. Please take a few minutes to re-familiarize yourself with the code of conduct manual.”

Passive aggressive at its finest. Instead of targeting the one or two individuals who are coming into work wearing sneakers and t-shirts, let’s email EVERYONE to tell them to read the manual.

“Hello, this is my last day here. I just wanted to email you to wish you all and say it was a pleasure working here. I am off to face new challenges but I hope to stay in touch.”

Uh…yeah. Good luck to you. God speed and all that. Who are you again?

“Mrs. Maple is our new director of the Bidding Team. Please join me in welcoming Mrs. Maple to our company!”

Hello Mrs. Maple. I’m Drac0. No you don’t know me and we will probably never ever cross paths with each other because our positions here have nothing to do with each other. In case no one has told you, you have to empty your own garbage. Also, it is customary for the new guy to buy us all coffee and donuts after their first week. Oh and Fridays is “Dress as a clown day”. Welcome aboard!

“Urgent! Drac0, can you have a look at this and give me an answer by the end of the day?”

I don’t need to wait until the end of the day. My answer is “No!”

“Team, in order to align our schedules, please fill in the 4-week-look ahead Excel file. I placed it in the transfer folder.”

Would that be the engineering transfer folder, the management transfer folder, the common transfer folder, the US transfer folder, the European Tranfer folder, or the Published docs transfer folder? Actually you know what, forget it. My answer is “No!”

“Please note that server USDX3001 will be down for maintenance on Saturday between midnight and 2am. We apologize for the inconvenience.”

OMG! What the hell? Why!??!? What does this mean!? What is going to happen? Normally I am asleep at that time but this sounds serious if you are telling me! Dear lord! What am I supposed to do? I guess I’ll disconnect my computer and take it home with me. I’ll find a corner in my house and curl up in a fetal position and pray that the “inconvenience” doesn’t affect me!

“This is a friendly reminder that you need to have your timesheet handed in by noon today”

Yeah, thanks, because I totally forgot that you mentioned this yesterday, and the week before, and the week before that….

“The social club is having its annual Christmas party at Bum-Phuk-nowhere. Please reserve your places now.”

Oh yes, I want to travel 50 miles to a place so I can have 1 glass of free cheap wine with people I already spend 45 hours a week with. Thanks, but no thanks.

“Drac0, I have a question concerning the Data Acquisition System. I have finished with the files. How do I upload them?”

Are you kidding me!?!? I showed you this like a DOZEN TIMES!!! *sigh* Alight. Print the files out (in color). Place them in a neat pile by your desk. Do a little dance around them while chanting “Manga-manga-manga-Ding-Dong!”. Files should upload by themselves. If it doesn’t work, try it again but take off all your clothes first.

“Message from the President: Remember! Quality is your responsability!”

Right. By the way, you misspelled responsibility. Punch buggy, no punch back!

“The president’s new Podcast is up. Check it out by clicking on the link”

I did. Video and audio streaming is blocked by the firewall that the president imposed on us. You gotta love the irony. Can you spell Irony?

“Message to all divisions. For your convenience, this message is printed in 5 languages.”

Great! Running spell check in one language wasn’t complicated enough you gotta prove to us you can FUBAR a slew of them.

Comments

Drac0's picture

We have an expression for that: "Forcefully Volunteered".

But, we're step-parents so we should be used to that Sad

AllySkoo's picture

I had a chain of emails this week from one particular person. The summary:

Her: I can't find value XYZ in this report! Can you find out why it's not in the system?
Me (after running the report myself): It's line 117.
Her (attaching a copy of the report): Here's the report, it's not there!
Me (after looking at the attachment): It's there. Line 117.
Her : I don't understand why it's not showing up. Are you sure it's in the system?
Me (cc'ing her boss): Line. One. SEVEN. TEEN.
Her boss: Ally is correct. The value is at line 117. Sorry about that.

The capper? She did the exact same thing last week. I swear to god I'm going to delete her email without responding next time....

Drac0's picture

Wow! I think the worst case of employee stupidity was a secretary that lasted all of 2 weeks here. My name is printed clearly on the wall above my desk. This secretary asks me "Are you Bob?", "Are you John?", "Are you Peter?"....All within the space of a week. Each time I would answer "No, my name is *points to nameplate*". She would then ask "Well where does Bob/John/Peter sit?".

Since she is new and obviously quite frazzled, I decided to help her out and escort her to the person she was looking for. I mean, eventually she would get the hang of it right?

*BUZZER*

She came by one day and asked "Are you Denis?". I said no. She asks "Do you know where Denis sits?"

Denis happens to sit on the other side of my cubicle wall. So I point.

She then asks. "Well how do I get there?"

*blink* *blink*

My cubicle mate at the time, who is a bit of a joker says "Well you can hop on Drac0's desk and climb over the wall."

"Yeah! That's a great idea!" I said. I then proceeded to clear things off my desk.

"Come On, I'll give you a boost" I said as I kneeled down and cupped my hands together.

Oh man! The look on her face was priceless!

I never saw her again after that.

AllySkoo's picture

LOL! Oh my god... HOW can some people live like that? HOW?!?! I mean, that HAS to be willful stupidity at that point.

Drac0's picture

>Revised Trash Removal List<

I can't believe I forgot about those.

"Warning. The engineering transfer folder has reached critical memory capacity. If you have anything there that can be archived, please do so now. Otherwise it will be deleted at the end of the month."

Transfer folders are temporary folders where we put "large" files in that surpasses the email cap. Since I (and EVERYONE else in this company) mostly work with PDFs that have 3-D engineering models, that means every file we handle is large. It's truly pathetic. My personal yahoo account has a larger memory cap for attached files than my professional account. Shouldn't that be the other way around?

AllySkoo's picture

"Best of luck in achieving your goals today and every day!"

LOL! I am seriously going to autosign my emails "And may the odds be ever in your favor!" from now on. That's really what that made me think of!

ctnmom's picture

I work at a financial cooperative, I run 2 one person offices (that woman who works for me is a REAL bitch lol) and the e mail clusterfucks I witness are something to behold. "We'd like to give a big congrats to Fatso for blahblahblah" Fatso is usually accomplishing something us people in the satellite offices are doing everyday, minus the blowing of our own horns. And the monthly newsletter is a real hoot as well.