Thursday, January 11, 2007

 

You Love It!
Pointless Shit!

I know I change the polls in the sidebar, probably way to often and always without any notice. I never discuss the results. Yeah, the polls are as pointless as everything else on this blog. I ran a poll a couple of weeks ago, asking for your favorite feature on theGlobex Corporation Newsletter. The answer was pretty clear, over sixty percent of you agreed that Pointless Shit Thursday was your favorite day of the week. More amazingly, since I was the only one who answered Sue Foley Photo Friday, that means that a full 100% of respondents preferred Pointless Shit Thursday. Both of you preferred Pointless Shit Thursday. Of the three respondents to that poll, I was the only one who chose Sue Foley Photo Friday, the other two chose Pointless Shit Thursday.

So I'm giving all of you readers of the Globex Corporation Newsletter exactly what you want, more Pointless Shit

In my job, the most pointless of shit is the email I receive. With the new year upon us, a new policy of email retention is being implmented. The following from an email detailing the plan:

Today, we have over 9,800 employees with access to Microsoft Outlook. We have over 88,000,000 emails in the system, for an average of 9,000 emails per employee.


Nine thousand emails? For me? That's an average of 24.657534 email every stinking day of the week, including emails and holidays!

Those 88,000,000 emails take up 3.5 Terabytes of hard drive space, and cost millions of dollars each year in storage and other related expenses.


Millions of dollars? Then why are we doing this? Millions of dollars? The company sends me all of this email, now the company is complaning that is costs "millions of dollars" in storage for this?

We also are spending millions of dollars on outside counsel fees to review the emails on our servers (most of which have nothing to do with a particular piece of litigation).


Again, an easy solution. If it is costing the company millions of dollars to store emails and to and have legal cousel review all emails even though most have nothing to do with the particulars of a piece of litigation, then stop sending me so much email!!!!

Because of the high volume of emails generated and received every day at [the nameless company], and because so many emails do not meet the definition of a record, emails should be managed on a daily basis.


Well, apparently you're already reading my email, looking into my inbox to make sure there's nothing pertaining to a particular piece of litigation. Couldn't you just manage my email for me while you're in there? I mean, it sounds like you're a hell of a lot more interested in my email than I am!

If an email does not meet the definition of a record because there is no business or legal reason to preserve it, you should delete it.


When I go into work tomorrow, after 3 days off, I will have, by company estimates, 73.972602 pieces of email to go through, probably more since my days off don't conveniently fall on weekends when those who send so much email thankfully don't have easy access to company computers. Do you have any idea how long it will take me to delete all of that pointless shit?

BOJ

Comments:
I've actually seen companies reporting how much time on average an employee who's job is not based on e-mail spends reading and writing e-mails, taking them away from their regular responsibilities, and asking that the employee's spend less time using e-mail.

Funny though, as you pointed out, a majority of the e-mail is FROM a representative of the company... either a corporate message to all or from a manager relating to a procedure, problem, or upcoming task. And in OUR industry, e-mail IS the primary communication.

And yes.. Pointless Shit Thursday is my fav... but Sue Foley would come in a close second.

Quinn - Inventor of the Misery Maker line of fun, sadistic toys.
 
oh... and here's a suggestion I offer to your company in regards to that "e-mail storage space" problem.

Encourage people who send out commonly needed attachments (forms, spreadsheets, etc) to post them in a folder on a shared network hard drive. In the e-mail, link to the file rather than sending it as an attachment to 50 people... that'll reduce the need for that much storage space quickly!

Quinn
 
Glad you like the Pointless Shit but even more glad (gladder, more glad?) you like Sue Foley Photo Friday! I see that you like listening to her too.....
 
I was torn. I love Sue Foley Photo Friday but Pointless Shit Thursday is also deeply gratifying. To vote more than once seemed inappropriate and statistically gratuitous.

Was the report on the excessive expense of email sent out in an email? And how much more expensive would communicating be if this was all done on paper?!? At least email saves a tree.
 
Yes, sent via email. I refuse to remove it from my inbox. Let the lawyers look it over every couple of months.

Also, this was "company confidential," so don't tell anybody....
 
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