From: #Dept: HR

To: #All Users; #Guest Users; #Team: Management Team, #Team: Maintenance Team.

SUBJECT: PLEASE READ! IMPORTANT! ACTION THIS! DO NOT IGNORE! ARE YOU IGNORING THIS? I CAN’T BELIEVE IT. HOW CAN YOU IGNORE IT? LOOK, IT SAYS THERE, RIGHT THERE. THE FIRST THING IN THE SUBJECT – ‘PLEASE READ! IMPORTANT!’ AND YOU’RE STILL IGNORING IT. WHAT’S WRONG WITH YOU PEOPLE? I’VE EVEN PUT IT IN ALL-CAPS SO THAT- Actually, that’s giving me a bit of a headache now. Something about all-caps, it’s like someone’s shouting in your eyes. But, that’s the point here. This is an email of critical, critical importance so you can’t do that thing where you ignore it and then it goes further down your inbox then on Friday and someone suggests going for a drink and you’re like “Oh, I don’t know man, I’ve got to go through my Inbox, it’s getting really backed up there.” But then you decide to go for drinks because Sam might be there and you can pick up that conversation you were having the other week where there was definitely something going on between the two of you, and then this email, which is very, very important and critical, still doesn’t get read. Don’t do that. Just read it now. I’ve even put ‘please read’ – ‘please’ – you know, I’m being polite here. Alright, it’s in the all-caps thing which, I’ll agree, could be seen as a little aggressive and, to be honest, I’m starting to feel bad about but I’m going to stick with because it’s really, really important that this email gets read and I said ‘please’ which is polite, so I think that balances out with the all-caps. You see, you don’t know what it’s like, do you? Not for me. You probably send emails to people and those people read those emails and respond to you and you don’t think anything more about it. But not me, oh no. I send out emails to you all and people just see who it’s from and just move it to the deleted items folder. Yes, I know you do. I’ve seen you do it. I do work here you know. How do you think that feels for me? To send a really important department-wide bulk email round and see people eye-rolling and pulling faces and just deleting it. It hurts actually, if I’m honest. It’s not very nice. And then, when you need something from me, oh that’s different, then you’re all smiles and ‘oh how have you been? Haven’t seen you for drinks on Friday for ages.’ And I sit there, and smile back at you, but all I’m thinking is that you just delete all my bulk emails. And then I feel the tears just start to prick at my eyes and look away and you’re like ‘are you okay?’ and I’ll just say that it’s a bit dry in here with the air-conditioning and then I go home and eat a meal and go to bed and I just lie there trying to work out what it is about me that makes people feel they can just ignore emails I send that are of critical importance. Do you know what I do in the morning? When I wake up? I think that maybe today I won’t go into the office. Maybe I’ll just get in my car. Get in my car and drive and keep driving until I reach the ocean and just sit there looking at the ocean, and then I’ll stay there. I’ll rent a small shack on the beach and paint shells and sell those shells. Oh, I wouldn’t make a lot of money, but enough to cover my shack. And I’d eschew all technology, especially emails. I wouldn’t even sell my shells in an online store, even though that would probably really drive up revenue. People would wonder what happened, what made me go and live in a shack and paint shells that aren’t available on the internet and, because I’m really enigmatic, they’d never know. So, if I’m not here tomorrow, then that’s why, and you’ll all feel terrible. ‘Why didn’t we just read the emails, which were very clearly marked as being important’ – that’s what you’ll say. So, it’s up to you, read the email, or I’ll go and live in a shack with all my shells.

To all staff,

The expenses system will be unavailable on Saturday 14^th between 3pm and 4pm. This is due to essential maintenance.

Thanks
HR