Reply All E-mail: Good or Bad?

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Now that we have been fully immersed in the Age of Technology, I find myself annoyed at it once in a while.

The last bout of annoyance happened last week, when I was trying to finish up the last of my workday and I received a work-related praise e-mail. It was addressed to my whole group, naturally.

However, what proceeded to happen after the first e-mail was a slew of reply-all e-mails back and forth (there were 15 by the end of the e-mail chain) from certain members of my group, cracking jokes about who was going to the bar to celebrate and more jokes about who was going to pay.

While I didn't mind the humor, because it is needed in anyworkplace, I was quickly annoyed by the time the third extraneous e-mail cluttered my inbox. (We don't have the Gmail feature where all e-mails tied to one subject appear only once in your inbox.) And while deleting e-mails doesn't usually take too much time, it still wastes my time...especially when all I wanted to do was clock out and go home.

Have you had this happen to you? Does it annoy you?

Dear Mr. Snow Bird...

Dear Mr. Snow Bird*,

I know it's a difficult world out there...one where you have to adjust from windy country roads in the Midwest to the helter skelter grid-system of city life in the Valley of Arizona.

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Where, in only the short span of a couple months (November-February), you have to learn--or relearn--how to navigate the Arizona roads, in which we operate on very strict rules and drive *gasp* the ungodly speed of 45 miles per hour. Where impatient Arizona motorists, in a frenzy to reach home during the evening rush hour, will whiz right past your Cadillac because you are driving WAY below the speed limit...and you brake at the oddest times--like when you're 400 meters from the stop light and no one is in front of you. Where you find it hard to see the road signs in the setting Arizona sun, in the darkening sky, in the dusky road conditions, which makes you slow down even more to see the intersection as you mosey past it.

And I can understand that you may possibly have hearing loss or some kind of hearing impairment...due to the fact that you can completely ignore any type of honking. You probably come from a place where people are more gracious and let you do your own thing, even if it is against normal traffic laws.

But when you're stopped at an intersection...and NOT in a left-hand turn lane...and the light turns green, please PLEASE do not try to turn left. It is too late to get into the left-hand turn lane.

You caused a huge traffic jam and made this motorist *waves* miss two lights...and caused her to become super angry to the point where she wanted to flip you off.

Don't do this again.

Sincerely, Karen
p.s. Before I see you again, you may want to look up the term "U-turn."

*A snow bird is an elderly person who makes his/her way to Arizona just for the winter because the winters up north are too harsh.