Sometimes I Hate Email

This never fails to happen to me. Probably 2 or 3 times a month, I get a request at work to do something, and I do it.

Then the person writes back a week or two later to tell me that whatever I did, I did it wrong, and that I need to do it again. Sometimes they are polite about it. Sometimes they're not.

So I haul out my old emails--I keep about 3 months worth, which is about 2,000 emails--look the request over, and 99 times out of 100, I see that I did EXACTLY what the person asked. It is indeed, the originator who made a mistake and not me.

My next step is usually to reply to the person's email and say something like, "here is your original request. Did I misinterpret it?", and I attach the original email.

That's usually enough to get things back on track. (The main reason why I bother with this CYA-type step is because my customers have a say in my performance review, so it's important to me to keep the record straight).

Now, here's why I hate email. Every time I start to do this, is exactly the time that my email decides to freeze up on me, and I have to either wait forever, or shut it down and start it back up again.

ARGH! So, here I am, poised at the keyboard, ready to defend myself(!), and my computer gets stuck.

It's like a knight who leaps off his horse to face the dragon, draws his sword...no wait, my sword's stuck in the scabbard. Um, hold on a minute there, Mr. Dragon, I'm having a wee bit of a problem here. Just a minute... (pull, pull, wrench, wrench)...