Importance: High

Wednesday, June 28, 2006

It's a quiet day.

Too quiet - you think to yourself.

Then it happens….

A message arrives in your Inbox, but not just any message.

This message is adorned with the Red Exclamation of Importance!

You can feel the adrenaline in your fingers as they snap the mouse into position. A breathless moment during the double-click, and the message is now in front of your eyes:

Hi everyone! Just a little reminder to get those TPS status reports in by next week. Also, we've change the passcode for next month's conference call – it is now 6661212.
Thanks! :)

Oh. It's from that person. Every mail that person sends carries the Red Exclamation of Importance.

Have you ever wondered what that person would do in the event of a real emergency?

Comments
Bill Wednesday, June 28, 2006
Hmm, I think you have less annoying people than I do. With my pests, it's alwasy marked as Important, sensitivity is set to confidential, they have a really annoying sig with the crap about confidentiality and deleting the message if recieved in error and of *course* the obligatory Read Reciept.

No matter what, some people have this crap on everything - and they are always the same folks that think it's cool to CC the world whenever they think they've caught someone doing something wrong but are conspicuously quiet when it comes to their own issues.

Excellent post my man
Bill Lumbergh Wednesday, June 28, 2006
Ahh Scott, we're gonna need you to go ahead and come in this Saturday.

Oh, and next Friday... is Hawaiian shirt day... so, you know, if you want to you can go ahead and wear a Hawaiian shirt and jeans.
Peter Bromberg Wednesday, June 28, 2006
Personally, I've found email to have become passe. If they don't IM me on Messenger, then I usually make them wait until tney come over to my desk (all huffy and such). Some folks actually even get the message!
Marshall Harrison "the gotspeech guy" Wednesday, June 28, 2006
I get those kind too but it doesn't bother me as much as the ones with the Read Receipt turned on. I hate those.

And Outlook is so stupid that even though I've read it. Told it not to send a receipt then deleted it Outlook still prompts again when I clean up the delete folder.
Sahil Malik Wednesday, June 28, 2006
In a real emergency, that person would put a read and delivered receipt on the email message, alongwith the red expletive, I mean exclamation mark.
Scott Wednesday, June 28, 2006
Email is the bane of productivity.
Daniel Moth Thursday, June 29, 2006
Wow... So this guy works at your company too?
:-))
scott Thursday, June 29, 2006
Message content was fictionalized to protect the guilty ;)
TristanK Friday, June 30, 2006
Just a lil' Outlook tip here: if you want to be truly, utterly annoying in return, you can send a mail with a follow up flag set to a date in the past. (and marked for high importance, natch)

Typically, you then get:

- the message title in the inbox IN RED!
- a reminder popup AS SOON AS THE MESSAGE IS RECEIVED!
- very annoyed recipients

It's fantastic! I swear by it!

It's a good idea not to reveal the secret, otherwise Mr Exclamation (or Ms Exclamation - I've worked with several over the years) might upgrade his technique. Oops.
Scott Friday, June 30, 2006
Muhaha .. that's a good one ..
Jeff Atwood Saturday, July 1, 2006
> Have you ever wondered what that person would do in the event of a real emergency?

Probably up the ante to TWO red exclamation points.
Rob Williams Tuesday, July 4, 2006
This is exactly what Rules and Alerts were designed for isn't it? Something along the lines of

Apply this rule after message arrives
from AnnoyingPerson
and marked as HIGH IMPORTANCE!
mark as normal importance

Or you could always 'get them back' by sending an automated 'thank you for your important message' email in return, though this may be lost on some.
Flora Friday, May 7, 2010
@Rob Williams

I think I love you. Thanks to you, my day is 0.01% less annoying. Thank you!
Comments are now closed.
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OdeToCode by K. Scott Allen
K.Scott Allen