Webupon

Angry Emails

Before the age of the emails, it was much harder to send an angry letter. By the time you finished writing it, your anger had often dissipated. But if it hadn’t, you still had to fold the letter, address an envelope, put a stamp on and take it to the post box. If that didn’t give you enough time to calm down, then you really were looking for trouble.

Unfortunately, with emails, it only takes a fraction of a second to send an angry note. And like anything in that line, once it’s gone, it’s gone. You can instantly send another email apologising, but the damage is done. A person is much more likely to be so incensed by the angry email that they won’t even bother to open the apology. Or they’ll say, ‘As if I’d accept an apology from him.’

It’s as if a little devil in our brains delights in letting our fingers do the walking and sending out stuff we should have thought twice about.

Keep it Private

And it isn’t always just angry emails that cause problems. In fact the most notorious emails to become public (public in the sense of the original being sent onto thousands, perhaps millions, of other readers) have been in the tension-filled area of sex.

One young man in New Zealand sent a female acquaintance a suggestive email, and she sent it on to a friend – who sent it on to another and so on. It had travelled the length and breadth of the South Pacific before the day was out.

An Englishwoman sent her boyfriend a note complementing him on his sexual prowess, and he, boastfully, sent it on to some of his mates. It travelled throughout America and Japan before people got sick of sending it on.

A Matter for Regret

To come back to the angry email. Only this week a husband-to-be emailed a firm, The Great Marquee Company, in Auckland, New Zealand, to say that he would not be requiring their services. His email was polite enough, only mentioning that he and bride-to-be hadn’t liked the marquee they’d seen erected, and would have been disappointed to have used it.

In an extraordinarily foolish moment, the wife of the owner of the Company emailed him back in these words:

“Thanks for your reply. Your wedding sounded cheap, nasty and tacky anyway, so we only ever considered you time wasters. Our marquees are for upper class clients which unfortunately you are not. Why don’t you stay within your class level and buy something from Payless Plastics instead.
Kindest Regards, Katrina, Office Manager, The Great Marquee Company.”

The prospective groom, who intends spending NZ$30,000 on his wedding (no small amount), emailed the original email and its reply to someone else, and before the end of the day half of Australasia knew about it.

The owner of the company fired his wife, and posted an apology on his website, in a frantic attempt to retrieve some good out of the situation. The wife says she is suicidal about what she’s done, as well she might be.

“I’m suicidal. I just don’t know what to do. I am so apologetic and just want to say sorry to everyone.”

Give it a Little Longer

In my former business, I once received an email from a customer in which he began in an arrogant tone, went on in the same vein, and finished with more arrogance.

My initial reaction was to write a similar email telling him exactly what I thought of him and his behaviour (which we’d already seen in our shop on a couple of previous occasions). I wrote the email, but fortunately gave myself a few minutes to think about it.

And then I gave myself an hour. And another day, which is how long it took for my initial reaction to begin to ease. A week later I took another look at my email reply – and deleted it forever.