|
Angry E-Mail: Fun But Dangerous
 Isn’t if funny how we civilized humans handle our anger? Rather than engage our opponent in polite face-to-face discussion, we resort to other means. One of our favorites is expressing our anger in writing.
Letters to the editor are a great example. It seems like half are from an angry person berating someone else. These are fun to read, and lots of fun to write, but they don’t really accomplish anything. I admit I have been guilty in this regard on more than one occasion (“Cactus League, Here I Come” comes to mind.) Fortunately, letters to the editor are relatively harmless, mostly because everyone takes them for what they are — public bellyaching.
E-mails, on the other hand, have a much greater potential to do real harm. Here’s why:
They’re personal. A non-spam e-mail is sent by a specific person to another person or maybe a small group, and the parties generally know each other and also have a reasonable expectation that sooner or later they might run into each other in person. The writer of a letter to the editor can be pretty sure that will never happen.
When a person reads an e-mail, they can almost visualize the author actually mouthing the words. If the content is happy, that’s what they see. If it’s sad or angry, it comes through in spades.
It’s very, very difficult to exactly convey your intended tone. In a face-to-face conversation, it’s a proven fact that the words convey only 10% or so of what is being communicated. Tone of voice, facial expression, gestures and body language are what really tell the story. In writing, people are extremely sensitive to the tone of the prose. But very few of us are professional writers, so our chances of accurately setting a tone through words are slim. I can remember more than once reading something from a friend or family member and thinking, Hmmm… I know what the words say, but the way it’s written says the opposite. Even those of us who write a lot screw this up regularly.
You generally hit “Send” too quickly. Enough people have done this (myself included) that a company has sprung up to sell a service allowing users to retrieve e-mails even after hitting “Send.” A better solution is to read and re-read your e-mails at least three times before sending them. (I do it almost every time.) And if the content is touchy or controversial, you are well-advised to wait several hours or a day before sending. You will be amazed at how differently you view your own writing after it’s been allowed to simmer.
You never know who will ultimately read your e-mail. Any e-mail has the potential of winding up on the six-o’clock news. Or being read by multitudes in Peking, or by multitudes in your home town — the very multitudes you don’t want reading it. How many high-profile people have been brought down by errant e-mails? Plenty. Even if you implicitly trust the recipient, you might accidentally cc someone else. Or your recipient might accidentally forward it. It’s happened to me and it can happen to you.
But, alas, sometimes there is nothing quite so cathartic, liberating or therapeutic as writing that nasty-gram. Here’s how I handle this very human urge. I start an e-mail, but leave the To: and Cc: fields blank. No danger of an accidental “Send” there. Then I pour my guts out:
Hey knothead,
You, my FRIEND, are a LEVEL THREE IDIOT! If you don’t know what that is, it’s because you don’t read my column, MORON! If you did you might actually learn something about running a construction company. But no, there is no teaching you — you already KNOW IT ALL. Your head is crammed so full of VERY IMPORTANT KNOWLEDGE, there is no room to pack in even another small fact. Like the fact that your incredibly STUPID decision just cost my company FIFTY THOUSAND DOLLARS! Do you think money grows on trees?
Wow, that was fun! Now, after you’ve vented adequately, go back and start editing. Your finished product might look something like this:
Dear Mr. Jones,
I regret that we were unable to come to agreement on [such and such]. Perhaps we could meet next week at my office to discuss it further. I’ve come up with a couple of fresh ideas that may work well for us both. I’ll give you a call Thursday, mid-morning to set it up.
Best Regards,
Wow, that was productive! And, in business, that is the point.
Tim Garrison of ConstructionCalc.com, is a professional engineer, author and software producer for the building industry. Send e-mail to buildersengineer@constructioncalc.com. Tim reads every one.
This column cannot be reprinted without permission from the author.
The views expressed in this article represent the personal views, statements and opinions of the author and do not necessarily represent the views, statements, opinions or policies of the National Association of Home Builders. NAHB does not necessarily endorse any of the views expressed by the author and NAHB is not responsible for any direct or indirect consequences arising out of the views expressed in this article.
|
