Importance: High

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Importance: High

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?

Print | posted @ Wednesday, June 28, 2006 3:38 AM

Comments on this entry:

# re: Importance: High

by Bill at 6/28/2006 4:41 AM

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

# re: Importance: High

by Bill Lumbergh at 6/28/2006 8:55 AM

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.

# re: Importance: High

by Peter Bromberg at 6/28/2006 11:43 AM

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!

# re: Importance: High

by Marshall Harrison &quot;the gotspeech guy&quot; at 6/28/2006 12:56 PM

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.

# re: Importance: High

by Sahil Malik at 6/28/2006 2:19 PM

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.

# re: Importance: High

by Scott at 6/28/2006 3:45 PM

Email is the bane of productivity.

# re: Importance: High

by Daniel Moth at 6/29/2006 5:43 PM

Wow... So this guy works at your company too?
:-))

# re: Importance: High

by scott at 6/29/2006 6:01 PM

Message content was fictionalized to protect the guilty ;)

# re: Importance: High

by TristanK at 6/30/2006 6:26 AM

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.

# re: Importance: High

by Scott at 6/30/2006 1:27 PM

Muhaha .. that's a good one ..

# re: Importance: High

by Jeff Atwood at 7/1/2006 4:51 AM

> 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.

# re: Importance: High

by Rob Williams at 7/4/2006 6:20 PM

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.