Digital Manners Matter
There is no need to say Covid has changed how we work and live drastically, also no harm in repeating it.
So here we are. With increasing amounts of time spent in digital wastelands designed by our overlords (aka Microsoft), I am observing a disturbing trend: common decency and manners are in freefall. Seriously.
I want to share my favorite offenders in the ‘great collapse of workplace decorum’ here. Let’s laugh about it together.
‘Decline only’ people.
You definitely know them.
Imagine: you schedule a meeting, meticulously scanning digital calendars, using scheduling assistants, possibly even consulting the stars—because why not at this point? (You don’t want to talk about this when Mercury is in retrograde do you?)
After finding the ‘perfect’ time slot, feeling happy you hit send. The invite goes out. Objective clear. Attendees outlined. It’s basically a work of art.
Within less than 60 seconds you get a response : Declined: That meeting you tried to schedule. Just declined. No explanation, no context, not one single word about why this person can’t make it also not a new time proposal. Just a flat-out, one-word rejection that feels personal even though you know it isn't.
The story continues with you, instead of doing your work, embarking on a journey to understand why this person can’t join on a day and time where s/he seemed to be available.
Would you do that in your social life? Well don’t. Be a ‘decline and propose new time’ person, and not a ‘decline only’ person.
‘Too important to press forward’ people.
This is an all time classic. One of my all time favorite group, let’s call them ‘delegators’ . You can recognize this group from the e-mail they sent to the inviter, asking the inviter to forward an invitation to another person. Sometimes they even have the nerve to CC the other person they want you to forward it to.
Let’s be frank here. The forward button is not exclusive. It is right there for all of us to use. Why not use it? One does not need a degree in Outlook Forwarding Studies to master this skill. Is this a power play? If it is, it is a wildly inefficient one and it makes you look like you don’t know how to use your outlook despite your brilliance.
‘Out of the blue information’ people. (aka. fyi people)
This group is not as annoying as the previous two, they mean well. They have good intentions. Yet their good intentions combined with their lack of time (or desire) to provide you with context can be confusing.
Imagine: You are doing your own thing, minding your own business, dealing with your own corporate battle you picked for that day and -BOOM- there pops a mail in your mailbox. There are two flavors to this mail:
The Scroll: This is the flavor that comes with a subject so long, unrecognizable and perplexing that it makes one think ‘oh I am being included in a top secret operation’. Excited, you open the mail. There it is, the magical initialism ‘fyi’, followed by a thread of emails, replies, forwards, inside jokes, confusion about wrong people being looped in, some other topic being discussed in between… The mail chain is long and the mail chain is indecipherable. Instead of being informed you end up tired. Now you need to decide whether you want to embark on a journey to understand why this person forwarded this mail to you or not.
The Mysterious Attachment Style: Mail with no subject but an attachment. What is this? A report? A digital treasure hunt? Even AI assistants can’t make sense of them, what do you expect me to do with it? Well, guess who’s about to embark on a wild journey to figure out why this document was gifted to you? That’s right. You..
So, there you have it. A daily glimpse into the slow unraveling of digital work manners. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to go ‘propose a new time’ for a meeting that’s going to be declined ‘again’. Hopefully with more context.
If you are also corporately frustrated, get in touch with me and share your frustrations. We can laugh at them together.
