You Suck at Email!

This video might be funny, and it might contain some social commentary, but I’m filing it under personal videos because I’m so pissed off at people and their crappy email etiquette that it has become, indeed, quite personal. I have friends that think they’re too cool to spend time being considerate in their email replies. They want to come off as witty or interesting, too cool to be nice, full of quips, that kind of thing. And they, for years, have annoyed me with their three-word email responses which rarely address what needs to be addressed and always leave me with the quandry: do I email back and say, please re-read this email and answer my question, I really need to do the answer!? Or, do I just give up on the medium and call them so they are forced to actually listen a bit more. The worst. I hate it! And it’s been going on for years. But now, crappy email etiquette seems to have gone outside the realm of just lame friends and into the realm of business. More and more, people just feel like it’s ok to not respond to email that needs responses. Hi, client, where’s the check you’ve owed me for 6 months? You know what the response is to that email? Crickets! Silence! Nada! Who in their right mind thinks this is ok? I would NEVER treat someone I owed money to like that. I pay out my crew even before I get paid for the job, which means I never have money and it always sucks, but you know what? I’d still rather do that then owe people money. And yet here are these companies that owe me money actually not responding to my email inquiries, which I’d like to say are always polite and nice. Then there are people who ask me to pitch them ideas or send them spec work for potential future work, and I do, and they just don’t get back to me. If you don’t like the work, just say it! It’s not like I’ve never faced rejection before. That’s part of the territory. What SHOULDN’T be part of the territory are people leaving you wondering, what happened? Did they look and not like it? Did they not have time to look yet? What’s the deal? Just tell me the deal so I can move on. We’re all adults here, I can handle it if you didn’t like the work. What I can’t handle is you just ignoring me like we didn’t just have meetings for a month. Again, I’d never do that! Face the music people and just be honest. Tell me you haven’t looked at it, tell me your company ran out of money, tell me you hated it – I don’t care, just let me know where I stand. The last bad email etiquette issue that I’ll vent about this week is how people whip off 3 word email responses that literally have nothing to do with the email I sent. Can you not read? Did your school never focus on reading comprehension? Are you really just too busy to grasp the main points and questions of a 100-word missive? Worst. l People’s email etiquette is the WORST these days, I hate it, and I want them to stop being such bad emailers. NOW. See? Told you it was personal. I feel better now.