Originally posted on October 31, 2007 @ 7:41 pm
One of the most frequent uses we have for our laptops is sending and receiving emails. I still remember the first time I got my own email address (about ten years ago). I was obsessively checking my inbox for any kind of mail — even spam! There was even a forwarded email circulating about how to tell if you are an email junkie. Of course, that was still during the infancy of commercial email, when everyone looked at it as this shiny, new-fangled toy.
Jump a few years back to the present and email has lost its “new toy” sheen. People have now seen its blemishes and ugly spots. First, there is spam, then the proliferation of hoax and scam emails, and of course, there are the trojan and virus infested emails that wreak havoc on your computer.
Harris Interactive recently conducted a survey on the biggest pet peeves that happen in the workplace and, surprisingly, it discovered that the abuse and misuse of emails has now emerged as one of the biggest annoyances at work. According to respondents, they are irritated when officemates use the “reply all” function on emails without thinking. This practice floods inboxes with emails that are not important to people not involved in the communication or the project. Another pet peeve is the use and misuse of blind carbon copies (BCC).
Even though email abuse has risen on the list though, the biggest pet peeve is still gossip in the work environment, with 60 per cent of respondents listing it at the top of their list.
Well, include gossiping via email as an emerging pet peeve in the years to come.