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Friday, August 05, 2005

Email free Wednesday

What a very silly idea and how inevitable that it comes from some ancient PC Plod.

There's my precious Albion under siege by sophisticated chemists and their suicidal 'mules', using the latest technology to maim and kill, and here's Officer Baker banning staff from sending emails one day a week in a fogey's effort to make people "talk to each other".

Dude, I remember being banished *back* to my desk to communicate via email rather than step briskly round for a concise 1:1 visual contact encounter.

Wait, no, the old codger is NOT banning email. He's also conceding that, "obviously, there are certain things which are far better dealt with by email and we will be receiving emails on Wednesdays which will need to be dealt with and they will be."

Obviously

And he further concedes that "emails do have their place in the modern world." So what's his beef? Well, the Chief has a suspicion that many of those emails "are unnecessary and could be better actioned either face to face or with a phone call."

You don't say? Damn these British rozzers are smart. You can see how Sherlock Holmes could only have been an Englishman.

OK, I think I get it. Omigod, Eureka! Brilliant. Baker should really write a book, it'd be up there with Bossidy, Covey and Pat Lencioni: what the chief is after is for "people to consider whether their email is really necessary."

Pray God this doesn't cross the Atlantic because, as every body knows, the Yanks play utterly unfair over this kind of thing. Greenspan would just totally run with it and the next thing we know, Britain would be a 3rd-world country, China's trade balance would be down the tubes (yaay!) and My Lord Rove of Plamesville would be coining it on the lecture circuit and shortlisted for a Nobel.

On a separate matter, I see from the PC Plod link that "bobbie" is no longer an acceptable nickname for the filth because it's "non-inclusive".

Oh, puleez - deferred succeedahs!!


Comments:
The chair (person) of the Electrical Engineering Department (http://www.ee.washington.edu/) here at UW is rumored to have sent down a similar decree: don't use e-mail when a face-to-face discussion is possible. One of his concerns is apparently that e-mail can be so easily misinterpreted without body language and facial expressions to help.

"...are unnecessary and could be better actioned either face to face or with a phone call."

Oh yes, business jargon makes cops look exceedingly smart.
 
In complete agreement. I just think we've gone past that nanny stage and have all worked out where we were over-mailing and to whom.

I'm a chatter by nature but quickly cottoned onto which of my colleagues preferred to stay focused on their screens and dealt promptly and comprehensively with emailed communiqués. Others couldnt write for toffee and invariably omitted core points in my original query.

Anyway, you know me, Chele - anything to provoke and be contrary ;-)

And yes, I saw red at that "actioned". If I ever go back to the UK, and find myself being questioned by those nice gentlemen in tightly belted raincoats, I shall have my arm dislocated within the minutes simply for insisting that I at least be interrogated in decent Queen's English.

Speaking of which, hon - you gone be actioning some that fiddle magic tonight down the Bageleria?

I've burnt a really nice CD for you incase you dont have it: The Catskill Collection with, among others, Jay Ungar on fiddle.

(Not sure if Blogger allows links like that so I'll post it to save you blocking and pasting)

C
 
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