E-Mails - Clogging the System
 

I was away for a couple of days last week and when I came back there were no less than 80 e-mails waiting for me. 20 were large documents that required reading and some action, all within 72 hours. Some were to notify short notice meetings and others were questions. All in all it seems that the e-mail system has quadrupled the workload and clogged the system with too much niff naff and trivea. The problem with this is that it wastes time, important issues are lost in the background noise and any d*ckhead with half an idea can tie up the whole world for hours.

Anyone else getting fed up with this?:{

Give him a jingle and leave a voice mail message...after you get through the robot....and 97 choices of options...and then listen to his message about being too frigging bothered to pick up the phone.

Techology is great isn't it?

I've toyed with the idea of removing Outlook from every workstation and making everyone write signals again. The small amount of extra effort might deter people from writing craploads of emails and actually doing some work. And it would give the Commcen something to do.

Wyler

Empty your inbox without checking after every absence from work.

If it's important- they'll phone or email again.

If it's not..........

Works for me.

CG

Yep, done that and one of the ones who phoned again was the CO. Very short conversation.:\

email went down in November. So far one phone call at deadline +90 minutes - sorted. One email passed on by 3rd party who thought I might be interested - only 3 weeks late.

Other than that - nil, nix and not missed.

Amusing in that not much has changed. During the late sixties I had as a secodary duty the position of sqn adj. As a F.O. at the time and determined to impress the boss, then the youngest Sqn Ldr in the air force, I assiduously filed and answered all incoming correspondence. Boss told me that it was a total waste of time, to take out what looked important and bin the rest, and if it was important they would write back. Wonderful advice...worked perfectly and we had the slimmest filing system on the station.

NC43

I remember that when the bunker goes down (flooding, standby generator tests, plague, pestilence etc) at STC everyone migrates to Cafe 1 and gets plenty of work done. And monkeys might fly out my :mad:.

View them in preview pane. Down arrow at 0.5Hz. Scan read. If it's b0110x hit delete, if it's a one line joke hit delete after chuckle, if it's an internet story hit delete, if it's got your name at the top; flag for attention, if it's a bo11ocking flag for attention, if the sender has requested a read receipt click NO, if it's from that MoD secretary you've been pestering, read between the lines then reply inappropriately, if it's a game have a quick blast.
Whole process take about 6 minutes. Snagless.

Your Mailbox is full and has been closed

Your Mailbox is full and has been closed!

Your Mailbox is full and has been closed,

Your Mailbox is full and has been closed.

Your Mailbox is full and has been closed
(Get the picture????)

Ultimate triv filter.
 

At the secret Hampshire airbase, we get repeated reminders that your inbox is nearly full until it actually is full and you can't do anything. Couple that with going away for a week and coming back to '287 unread messages' and it's a mighty pain in the hoop.

CG has it right. Ctrl+A, Del. Wipe the lot of it in a oner. If it has sat in your inbox for that long and the world is still turning, it's unimportant. If it is important, they'll get back to you. No more wading through the agenda for the RAF tiddlywinks team's AGM, volunteers wanted for stn drains secondary duty, standby power check will happen last week, SWO will use stop and search powers to measure sideburns, has anyone seen my left silver shadow etc etc.

It would be nice if they did just that. Recently, I arrived back from 2 successive month-long dets to find 9532 unread e-mails in my inbox.

I had about 3 important ones, 10 informative ones, and about 9500 saying " Your inbox is full, you must delete some stuff."
It's programmed to be sent once every 15 minutes!!??!!?? Damn it, who the heck came up with that brainwave.
So in the process of trying to delete all this rubbish, I received a further 4 messages.....:mad: :mad: :mad: :mad: !! Just stop sending me those messages, and there'd be a whole lot less of a problem. More :mad:

This is where mine has gone;
http://www.csplus.com/images/trash.jpg
I misunderstood the trash bin concept. It allows me to actually do my job and go bloody flying now. The world is still rotating as far as I am aware.


Another thing this 'revolution' is responsible for is lazy barstewards not bothering to address to specific people. Instead of taking a bit of time to send to those who it is relevant to, they just CC it to the fecking world. As has been said, I am not interested in the AGM of the Womble Touchers Society meeting at 18:00 in the Scout hut (bring own refreshments) or the fact that some gipping civvy bird from admin has had a pair of equally gipping sprogs and 'any flowers or cards should be sent to Twycross Zoo'. This is an invasion of my privacy and if I wanted to be bombarded with 1000Mbs of utter crap, I would sign up for every chad internet site going. Work email has bypassed the age old system of the chain of command. every tit can 'contact' me now. Above and below.

Top tip; When actually at work, set your email to 'out of office reply'. When actually out of the office revert back to normal flow. As has been said, if its important, 'they' will bother their arses to contact you in the old fashioned way.

TOPTIP.....

In the message box, go to "create rule for message"

Create a rule which states... "where the to line contains people".... insert YOUR e-mail address...

then go to the... "delete it" box. Then, every e-mail that comes in gets thrust straight into the deleted folder...

Like the good man said, if its that important , they will contact you again.

...or set an out-of-office reply that reads:
"Due to a network error your message has not been delivered. Please re-submit at a later date"

Then play Spot-the-Dullard :ok:

southside's tip is one way. Depending on your mail system, another is to set a rule that if the sender isn't in your "Frequent Contacts" list, it goes in the trash. Though you still get loads of mail, its only from people you customarily reply to - like The Big Boss.

The ultimate method of course, is to proxy your secretary to your e-mail while you're away. I know that not everyone has the luxury of a secretary, but don't you have 'deputies' in the mob any more?

Wyler,

You must be as sick to death as I am of random niff naff from the Help Desk.

Back from Cyprus last September, I reckon half of my whopping 243 emails were from the unHelpful Desk.

"The server will be going down for 15 minutes for essential maintenance from 1000hrs on 6 Aug."
"The server has been restored."

"The admin site telephone system will be shut down for 1 hour for essential maintenance from 1300hrs this Saturday."
"The phone system has been restored."

"There will be twofers in the All Ranks' Club tonight to celebrate SAC Grubscrew's conviction for blasphemy."

"The Officers' Mess kitchen will be closed for essential maintenance for 2 days starting this Thursday".

"There will be a coffee afternoon in aid of the Stn Charities Cttee's Executive Beer Fund in the Sgts' Mess at 1400 this Friday."

"The email system will be closed for essential maintenance for 30 minutes from 1530hrs this afternoon."
"The email system has been restored." (Like, duh!)

"Essential maintenance will be conducted on the fire alarm systems at the Admin site all day on Thursday. ASORs will not be made available for night-shift workers from Ops Spt."

"There will be an interruption in the Admin Site power supply on Saturday due to essenti

I DON'T B1O0DY CARE!!!! SET YOUR BLASTED EMAILS TO EXPIRE, FOR GOD'S SAKE!!!!!

Next time I go on det, I'm setting my Out of Office to forward all emails to the Help Desk... ;)

Expire is one solution.

Have you tried setting automatic transfer to Delete?

Some of the best ones are from the Civil Servants. They cannot just send an e-mail. They have to send it to their 'Line' Manager, who then sends it to their 'Line' Manager for authorisation.
So, you get an e-mail informing you that the smell in SHQ is due to a 10 year build up of mouse pooh and it is signed off by three people!!!:mad:
Some good tips though, thanks. I will set my machine to stun tomorrow, at the start of my weekend Q shift.:{

It gets no better in some civilian environments. A friend of mine did a consultancy task for/in a large Swedish telecoms supplier. His monthly report on his activity within the UK arm of one customer had to be copied to a mailing list of 125 people.

"I am away, and my mailbox is full. Your email has been automatically deleted. If you judge it important that I see it, please resend it after [date]. For urgent matters, please contact [deputy] on [phone]." Now that's an OOA autorespond. :ok:

adr

<<They have to send it to their 'Line' Manager, who then sends it to their 'Line' Manager for authorisation.
So, you get an e-mail informing you that the smell in SHQ is due to a 10 year build up of mouse pooh and it is signed off by three people!!!>>

You clearly haven't worked for NATO or some bosses.

One I had insisted that a letter from a sqn ldr be answered by a sqn ldr. That the one at group and the flt lt at station were working in the same policy area but the station sqn ldr was different branch and no understanding did not count. The result was a nonsense letter and station sqn ldr getting strange telephone calls.

Or the NATO case, same rank again but this time a memorandum would have been signed off by the originator, his boss, the wing cdr and maybe even higher. A quick reply? Never.

At least the emails I used to get when the system worked carried a brilliant disclaimer that the views expressed by the author did not necessarily reflect thos eof the department. DELETE Next Unread.:)

what a load of tosh. We have a civil servant in our office and she has full internal and internet e-mail access. I regularly get e-mails from civil servants in different IPT's.

Not sure which CS's you are talking about but the ones at ABW dont have that regime.

Why the f*ck would I make it up?
The ones here do just that, all the time. I think it's called Empire Building or similar.

Dear Walter,

Because you think that to make up a cock and bull story which has no basis of any evidence whatsoever might be amusing.

Empire building is not making up stories. Thats called prevarication.

The thing that grips me about e-mails is excessive use of the 'Reply to all' function which results in all sorts of uninteresting guff blocking up the Inbox.

In general our e-mail discipline is dreadful as indicated by those people who think that it is vaguely appropriate to offer their youngest child's bike for sale by irritating global e-mail. Simple solution - determine total cost according to rough average hourly rate and a 15 second 'open, read, swear, delete' cycle plus a nominal charge of £10 for using the expensive IT system then send a bill to the offending idiot.

SS

would that be on top of the £10 we already have to pay?


Mind you, thats for the internet access. The E-Mails are free.

Every day I used to get an email inviting me to someones funeral and telling me what to wear and where to send flowers or not to send flowers at all. They were and probably still are from all over the country and of people whom I had never met or heard of.
From a morale point of view I'm not convinced that this is good practice. It caused much conversation in the crew room as to the mortality rate in the RAF

Dear Southside,
I will bite one more time. Just because you do not believe it does not mean it is not true. A high proportion of e-mails sent on this unit, by CS's, are authorised by the next in the chain up to 3 times. There is no rhyme or reason other than some people desperately trying to justify their existence. By creating volume they add to their own sense of self importance. That is Empire Building of the worst kind. It is not just confined to the civvies but they are indeed the masters at it.

My point is that those rules are RAF rules and not civil service rules.

I work extensively ( daily/ hourly e-mails to several IPT's) and they all have complete and unrestricted access to e-mails. The only check that their e-mails receive is the spell check.

Southside,

Guess it goes something like this on those IPTs that you pester all day when you're not busy on this website.

Click - open, read, 'Oh no another ****ing e-mail from that ******* ****** Southside' click - delete

Slipperyslapper....have you read them ?

Southside

I thought you were busy flying your Lynx for Queen and country, getting as many hours as you did 20 years ago, coping with gapped positions and generally having a grand life in the RN/FAA, morale high, etc. Instead you are working extensively with several IPTs, e-mailing Civil Servants daily/hourly? A regular 9-5 office job maybe? Weekends off, no trips to the sandpit for 4 months of the year every year - with the prospect of Afghanistan to come? Getting in all your annual leave?

Just questions, the answers to which may explain why your life is such a 'rosy' one compared to many in the military??

oh yes...plenty of that 2.... Thats why Im the only one on the entire airstation still here on a Friday afternoon when the rest oif them buggered of at 12....

Still, it pays the mortgage...

Then they send you a robot generated email every 15 mins telling you your mailbox is FULL, how stupid it that? After a 2 weeks on leave I had 800 plus emails over 700 telling me my inbox was full.
I called the civis who run Brize net and the answer was "because thats how its set"???