General Etiquette > All In A Day's Work

colleagues who delete your email without reading

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gadget--gal:
I set up tracking on my email so that I get a receipt when someone reads my mail. The have to click "yes" to allow it but I automatically get a receipt if someome deletes my email without reading it. the reason I track email is that sometimes people take a while to respond  (or don't even bother) so the read receipt tells me that they have at least read it.

I only get non-read receipts once in a while but last week I had to send out an urgent email because a laptop had been stolen. I was the second round robin email that week about laptops, someone else had sent the first one. The second email was a brief of a poitn made earlier and offering our department as a contact point.

So... just about everyone reads my email. no response was required but someone deletes my emal. When I look them up it turns out they have a laptop so this email was especially important to them!

so I wrote them a brief note:


--- Quote ---to: colleague
subjet: laptop email

Hi,

There have been a few “round robin” emails about laptops but they are important (especially if you have a tablet). It might feel like email overload at times but please read them before you delete them.

Kind regards,

Gadget--gal
specific IT Department
--- End quote ---

Was this over the top? in our organisation, people whose equipment is stolen always feign ignorance about procedures, (they dont feel the need to lock up $2000 laptops unless they are specifically told.) so I just needed to make sure people get the message. Could there have been another way to go about it?

Lisbeth:
I might have gone through HR and this person's supervisor before directly sending out an E-mail to this person, so their superiors know that they aren't reading the E-mail as they're supposed to.

platys:
This is funny, because I was just complaining about how some departments send out way too much email, much of which has nothing to do with me or my job, so I just get used to deleting them out of hand.

I'm not saying this is you, but for example, or IT department sends out these "URGENTURGENTURGENT" emails that are rarely urgent to me - for example, today they send out an email to the entire organization telling us that our network connection to a particular overseas office might be slow. 

1.  I don't care.
2.  I so don't care.
3.  I read half of it and deleted it.

The problem happens when one in twenty emails actually is important, but you don't read it, because the other 19 emails were useless to me.  It's just human nature, especially since people are pretty overwhelmed by their email traffic.  My email box, with frequent archiving, is often at the 100 MB mark.  (My email archive is in the gigabytes.)

lolane:
I am wondering, sometimes I get e-mails from people and a little message box pops up saying a reciept is requested. I always click that I don't want a reciept sent. So, I am wondering what type of message you get when people do that... if it's the same message perhaps people are clicking that they don't want a reciept sent to you. So, if that's the case maybe they are reading the e-mails... of course if it is a different message then I think your e-mail was ok.

Peach:
Perhaps the subject line of the e-mail was enough of a clue for the person to delete the e-mail without reading it, but I feel a little hurt as well when I get one of those "Your message was deleted without being read" receipts. Sometimes I get them months after the original e-mail was sent- then it doesn't bother me as much.

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