Email - Cover my Butt
Most any of us that work in an office, manage a shop, run a business, or deal with co-workers in today’s world have grown accustomed to depending a great deal on our computers and email.
I remember the chuckle we had when our company was threatening to remove the privilege of email and internet from anyone who continued to abuse the privilege.
What a joke. They would take away the tool to perform the job they wanted us to do and leave us doing what, digging through and old Thomas Registry and snail mailing clients and vendors? It was rather laughable. Take the hammer from a carpenter and try to build a house.
Email has become an indispensable tool for many, if not most of us today.
Email is a love and hate relationship for me. I can’t work without it, but I can’t get much done because of it.
It really amounts to a tool that we need to learn to use all over again now that our world’s have sucked it in to the point that we use email rather than managing jobs, projects, and people.
OK, what do I mean by needing to learn to use email all over again? What do I mean by using email rather than managing jobs, projects, and people?
Well, how often do you dig through your sent box or archives? Only every day, right?
Why?
Sometimes it is for that tad bit of information you misplaced. Sometimes it is for that company name or email you need. But, I’ll bet you dig through it as often to prove you sent an email, or prove what someone actually emailed you!
That’s right. Email has become the ultimate ‘cover my butt’ tool in most work environments.
I work in a company with manufacturing facilities all over the country. We often have projects that have to be coordinated between facilities. It becomes an email quagmire.
There, that kind of rhymes, doesn’t it: Email Quagmire.
I have a friend who is an excellent example of those who avoid technology. Not because he is stupid, but because he doesn’t want to take the time to learn it. Yet he has become the Email King.
He hasn’t mastered storing and retrieving things, so he prints them. He will print an email and staple it to a work order and file it. For the information? NO. Because he needs it? NO.
He does it to cover his butt. It’s just to prove he told them to do it and what he said and when he said it.
So, this wonderful tool for communication has turned into management by proof of blame.
How do we fix it? I don’t know.
If you find out, send me an email.
Regards.
