Like the universal truism that everyone thinks they have more “common sense” than others, everyone complains of receiving too many useless emails. This is excluding all the junk email and “Dear Friend, can I trust you with my illegally acquired millions?” type of emails

So, if everyone denies generating all these unnecessary emails, who is doing it? Someone must be guilty. As a matter of fact, we all are; me, you, you, and you right at the back!

Writing gratuitous emails is addictive and by dint of writing a single email to say, three people, we are creating a circumstance which may give rise to three replies and each reply is likely to generate its own 3 further emails, and so on. You don’t have to be an actuary or statistician to work out the likely exponential outcome of this single action. So, how do we combat this pandemic?

I confess, I don’t know for sure what the right answer is. However, I would like to suggest some measures to control the spread and lessen your personal traffic of what I call “vacuous email”. You can only apply this to your own sphere of influence and hope that those around you do the same, thus reducing the number of dark coloured lines in your in-tray that signal new and mostly unwanted arrivals.

Here are some tips for managing your email traffic. They are the SEVEN Deadly Sins of email Etiquette. To be fair, one of them (number 4) does not necessarily spawn new emails but, it is so odious a behaviour, it freaks me out and I wish to God it was made illegal with a stiff prison sentence attached.

  1. Aggression: Have you noticed how more aggressive we are in our emails than we are in real life? We use stronger and harsher words to express opinions and we are likely to list 3 or more reasons (because we like to use bullet points) to justify why we “strongly” disagree. Recipients will reply with even more aggressive language and the spiral begins. Here is a tip: if you are brave enough, why don’t you go round and see Big Jack in person and give him a face-mail; let us see how brave you are then.
  2. Responding when cc’d: You innocently write to Anne asking a question about her area of responsibility. Courteously, you carbon copy Sue and Fred to keep them “in the loop”. Before you or Anne can gather your wits, Fred pops up with his own email giving you the answer, which may or may not be the right answer but, Anne is now irritated and will write a corrective reply with an aggressive edge to it because Fred has interfered once too many times. Fred, let me explain something to you: when you go to the theatre or attend a TV quiz show recording, you are essentially cc’d on the action but, you are not supposed to join in.
  3. Reply All: The problem starts with the first email whereby you write to one or two people with your “brilliant idea” and copy half the building on it because you like an audience when you speak! The recipients, and some of the copied audiences, get excited by your “dumb idea” and hit “reply all” suggesting their own “brilliant ideas” instead. The entire building is now buzzing with twenty thousand dumb ideas and only one brilliant one; yours of course! Please remember that the original person who sent the email knows all the recipients of his email but, you may not them so, why are you bothering them?
  4. Blind copy: Here is the most despicable feature in any electronic business application that has ever been devised! Why in the name of sanity would anyone want to blind copy another person without letting the main recipient know they are doing it? I have been given many explanations as to why and at best these are weak and poor arguments and at worst they are duplicitous and underhanded. On principle, when I am given the dubious privilege of being blind copied I delete the damn thing before reading it. Please don’t do BCC; it is creepy.
  5. Gratuitous Agreement: John writes to Sue, Anne and Fred an email suggesting a clever idea on saving paper in the office. Fred writes to all saying: “Great idea!” Sue thinks of something that might scrubber the concept. Fred writes back saying: “Sue is right”. Anne thinks of a way round this little problem. Fred writes back saying: “Oh yeh, Anne has a point”. Fred, shut UP!
  6. Running Arguments (having the last email): There are characters amongst us who absolutely must have the last email. Imagine John and Sue above playing email tennis discussing John’s idea and each time one writes an email he/she raises the stakes on the argument, and always copying Fred and Anne, until the whole thing descends into a personal argument. Fred is enjoying himself because he is responding by just agreeing with the last email sent. In the meantime, Anne has lost the will to live and her inbox is inundated with a string of emails over a subject she could hardly recall by now.
  7. Forwards: Apart from the monkey-passing type of forwards you get from your boss asking you to deal with a matter you are not familiar with, which is bad enough, there is the unfunny, unwise, un-spreadable, irritating messages that implore you to pass the email to 10 other people and warning you that failure to do so will cause all the cute and fluffy animals on earth to expire by close of business. To those who do it: grow up, the animal kingdom is in more danger because you are stopping us from spending less time at the office reading your useless emails instead of spending more time nurturing and protecting those endangered creatures. Also, check the list of recipients on the email you are about to forward to me; I have already been sent it by the previous idiot!

To all the Freds out there, instead of your environmentally friendly email sign-off: “Think of the environment, do you need to print this email”, why don’t YOU think of humanity and don’t write that email in the first place? Try walking across the floor and speaking to John, Anne and Sue instead of writing to them.