Is Email “just a Mark” so Bad?
At work and in life, I love the script. If repetitive interactions are part of your life – making some kind of small talk, having to send the same emails at a specific frequency, making daily phone calls to customers, suppliers or sources – why waste mental energy with fresh material every time you have a line of communication , which, as you know, will help, say, distract a verbose person from the phone? Or effectively explaining to people at a party what exactly you do?
I once worked for someone who sent the same gifts to every client for all occasions, and whose emails were so consistent and short that a bot could write them. It struck me as odd at first, but I began to appreciate it for what it was: a masterful hit of efficiency, not to mention a tactic to prevent confusing or potentially awkward interactions in the aisle.
Obviously, there are limits – some of the phrases are notorious disasters (“Nice to meet you!” “Make sure you saw this?”), And they need to be removed from our collective cultural vocabulary immediately.
But I didn’t think “just checking in” was one of them. And I felt personally attacked by this recent article on money, which recommended doing all sorts of rhetorical back flips so as not to “just check” at all costs. This article sparked a fierce Slack debate among Lifehacker employees about whether passive-aggressive or just effective “just check.”
Moreover, if it’s so awful, what would you use instead? A messy explanation of why you’re emailing again? “Did you want to check this status”? (I know I’ve used this one, but it seems more aggressive.) Backtrack ????
If you have alternatives that are less annoying, by all means, leave them in the comments. Or, in other words: please advise.