This one really made me laugh, but I thought I'd share it with you guys just in case one of you is about to send an email to HR that might get you fired. File this under, "There's an app for that." ToneCheck is a free Outlook plug-in that analyzes your outgoing email messages for tone. It's designed to point out when you're, well, being a dick.
If nothing else, it might be worth installing just for a good laugh. Far more useful, in my opinion, is a tool introduced for Gmail that prevents you from sending email when you're too wasted to complete a few math questions. Mail Goggles pops up after you hit Send to ask you if you really want to send that email and asks you to solve a few math questions to ensure you're in your right mind. Its default setting keeps it inactive until late at night on the weekend, when you're most likely to send a regrettable message, but the settings can be adjusted for more frequent and/or morning drinkers.
We've all sent emails we regret. Taking the wrong tone with a superior can lead to big problems, and no one needs that. Email etiquette is important these days, because it is a limiting form of communication (the recipient only has your words to go by, instead of having tone of voice, body language, etc... to get your point across politely). And once it's in cyberspace, it's there forever.
Just ask that poor IT boob at Cornell. Email can ruin your life. A little closer to home, these knuckleheads didn't do Lehman Brothers any favors.
Anyone have any other epic FAIL email stories? I know the Street is full of them. Aleksey Vayner and Jeffrey Chiang spring to mind. But those were resumés, not really emails. Anyone have any juicy emails that really blew up in someone's face?
Not a Street story but when I was a sophomore in high school our accelerated program’s director (Mrs. G we’ll say) sent out a normal informational email to everyone involved in the program (>100 kids and their parents). One of the mothers responded for some reason with a very long letter in which she opened up and told Mrs. G that she felt her daughter was having a hard time in high school because she was relatively new in town and people were mean to her, etc, etc. She proceeded to give specific names of which kids she felt were particularly bad people and so on.
Anyways, as you have probably guessed by now, she didn't merely reply but rather hit the "reply to all". Thus, all of the little troublemakers (most of which were on the mailing list) got to read the new girl’s mom call them out by name. It was very quickly followed up by an email from Mrs. G saying “blah blah we are all mature people and please delete this email without reading it.” Needless to say not too many of the 15 year-olds involved were “mature” enough to pass up reading a treat of a prohibited message. I know I wasn’t.
HA just this morning I called my friends dad a FAGGOT (in caps, yes) thinking I was sending it to a friend. He sent "Morning SON" to which I replied "Morning FAGGOT". Instant regret.
What happens if we are exceptionally talented at math when we've had a few?
-Guy who loves to solve quadratic equations & taylor series when drunk
I have this on the difficult setting, and it doesn't prevent me from sending messages when I really want to. It really serves as more of a "You probably shouldn't send this email" warning sign when it pops up.
On the same email topic, WSJ has an article today about GS banning profanity in emails.
"Goldman's no-swearing dictate covers instant messages and texts from company-issued cellphones and emails. Verboten emails could get bounced to the compliance department. Others might be blocked completely, depending on the severity of the language."
Jesus. The Street gets a little softer every day.
One epic fail I have witnessed a while ago. The scenery: investment banking, late hours, team drinks previously at the office, internal conference call. Oh, I can see some of you are already giggling.
So basically we had this internal conference call grouping guys in my team and guys in another team about how we would be organising the two teams to work together on a deal that required both expertises. The head of my team liked efficiency, quick thinking people and tended to be a bit harsh on stupid people. But the guy was as quick to reward performance and I was really fine with that. So happens that a few people in the other team couldn't stand the guy. Namely, the head of the other team is a quite relaxed guy, and his team have a less successful track record. Comforted by his successful track record, my boss had gone pretty much hard on him when they screwed up something. After the said conf call (past 11pm) we just decided to leave the line open to help the communication between the teams, you know, just in case someone had a question he could ask it and anybody in both teams could answer it quickly. Most of us had to stay to work on the project, but we could hear most of them quickly leaving the office to get some rest. Nothing wrong with that. I guess that we could have just shut down the conf call line since they had all left. The only thing is... their boss stayed. He apparently phoned a friend of his and just started to say how much the people in our team were jerks, specifically my boss. During the whole conversation he still had the conf call speaker on and basically everybody here could hear him. We all went silently laughing to tears, boss included. For more than half an hour the guy just complained about the situation, repeating endlessly how much of jerks we were. The guy was apparently drunk, repeatedly stuttering the same accusations. When he ended his call we all laughed out loud, congratulating the guy through the conf call still open, and my boss simply cheered him, without responding to the many personal insults.
The teams synergy didn't survive the night. I guess the culture was just too different.
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