Thank God for emails

[Deleted]

Or paper trails.

Have you been in a situation where an email or paper trail saved your ass?

Today the VP of Operations, Regional VP and Zone director are holding a meeting in our zone with the store managers and I was supposed to provide our Zone Director sales numbers, net profit etc of our stores for the meeting.

My bosses calls me at 6:30 freaking out and screaming because his boss (the Zone Director) just called him to say I never provided the numbers and meeting start at 8.

I was driving so told him I will call him back, check my sent emails and yep there it was. So I forwarded it to the Zone Director and cc'd my boss this time. I call my boss back and tell him to check his email and yes I sent it since yesterday at 10 am.

I am guessing it got lost in all the emails he gets because if I get 30-40 emails a day I don't want to know how many he gets but damn I am glad for emails.

[midjd]

Have you been in a situation where an email or paper trail saved your ass?

On a weekly, if not daily, basis I get a lot of the "you never sent me that" too.

OTOH there have been a few times when I've sworn, "I never said that!" and lo and behold, it's there in an email from 2 years ago...

That's one reason I think Patraeus is so stupid - it didn't take me long to learn to be very, very careful what I say in email and text. Doesn't take much to put your ass on the line.

[Deleted]

Nov 15, 2012 8:48:58 GMT -5 midjd said:

On a weekly, if not daily, basis I get a lot of the "you never sent me that" too.

Well, I used to. Folks don't try it too use that excuse much after being publically embarrassed with it a few times. There is only so often you can say it went to your junk mail.

[BeenThere...DoneThat...]

Nov 15, 2012 8:48:58 GMT -5 midjd said:

That's one reason I think Patraeus is so stupid - it didn't take me long to learn to be very, very careful what I say in email and text. Doesn't take much to put your ass on the line.

...so should we be thankful for anonymous message boards?

[midjd]

I assume that anything I say here can be disseminated to my employer and friends/family. I do try to be careful.

[bookkeeper]

My husband and I use email at work religiously. We use it to follow up on conversations, clarify directions, and document just about everything. I once had a consultant at work who asked for a boat load of financial documentation to do a profitability analysis. I sent all documents email with a return receipt. You can only imagine my displeasure when I get an email that he deleted my email that contained all this work, without reading it. He thought he could make the bookkeeper produce a ton of paper so the customer ( my boss ) would think his service was really producing a product. It was just another futures/marketing scam that my boss fell for. At least he quit doing business with this liar before we paid a second year of consultatant's fees.

[Wisconsin Beth]

I was happy about it earlier this week. I got to forward the email I'd rec'd in Feb, from someone who's no longer employed by us. Now it's Admin's deal.

[muttleynfelix]

I email. It saves my butt a lot.

I also use to summarize phone conversations to my boss. He often wants us to take care of stuff but then doesn't always give us all the information. An email is a quick way to make sure that the information I relayed is correct or to let him know that yes there was a problem and I fixed it and this is how.

[Deleted]

It is a nice CYA for all parties.

"I didn't get that" is usually a valid excuse for not doing something because you can always blame the spam filter or email glitches.
"But I sent it" is great because you can provide a record of your efforts without making the other person wrong.

Cawiau and VP both get to be "right."

[Deleted]

It is a necessary evil. With everyone CYAing the number of emails that get sent are very high which causes problems of its own.

[Colleenz]

All. The. Time.

We have one group that is so notorious for trying to rewrite history that my boss has the same email he pulls out to send to the new leader every 2-3 years when the old one leaves.

[Phoenix84]

That's happened to me a couple of times. My boss asks for something then I send it then a couple of days later I get a call e-mail asking where it is and then I point out I sent it on X date at X time and send it again.

[Phoenix84]

Nov 15, 2012 9:20:07 GMT -5 midjd said:

I assume that anything I say here can be disseminated to my employer and friends/family. I do try to be careful.

I do try to exercise some restraint and careful topics, especially when posting about work or things related to work, and even doubly so when posting from work.

[shanendoah]

At my previous employer, the service manager came to me one day with a note to make a change to the bill of materials for an entire product line, removing some auxillary part. That note said the change was per the request of the president/founder of the company.
Because my actual boss was a micro-manager, I held on to every piece of paper with instructions to make changes that came from him or anyone else.
It took me a few days of dedicated work to make the change to all the BOMs, but I did it. A few weeks later, the President/Founder stops me in the hallway, asking me why I made this change- he hadn't told me to make it, my boss hadn't told me to make it, the service director hadn't told me to make it....
I was able to respond- actually, the service director did tell me to make it, and he told me it was your decision. I have the note he gave me regarding it.

I ended up having to go back in and change all of the BOMs back to what they were originally. And my boss gave me a new directive- any new change that came from the service director, I was to sit on for a week, and then hand to my boss to vet before I did anything.

[Deleted]

I have the added benefit of being in the department that manages email and IM at my company. Not only can I say I send something, I can provide the server logs showing it arrived in the other person's inbox

[movingforward]

Not only have emails saved my ass a couple of times but they once saved a co-worker's ass. The co-worker happened to copy me on an email she sent to another co-worker. The other co-worker was trying to throw her under the bus saying she never let her know about X. This happened a couple of months afterwards and the co-worker who sent the email couldn't find it. I keep emails for a really long time and happened to think to myself that I remembered being copied on that subject. I went back and found the email, printed it and handed it to our supervisor. The co-worker who claimed she never received it was always trying to blame everyone else for her mistakes so I found it pretty satisfying and, of course, the person who was being thrown under the bus was very grateful.

[Nazgul Girl]

My employer has so many complex subgroups, changes being made, problems with the new computer system, and many, many coding questions and answers that I save every single email that I send out, and never eliminate any emails that I receive except for ones like " It's Bertha's retirement party today ! " and " I have eggs and honey for sale. " It's very handy to be able to pull one out from a year ago and let somebody read what they wrote or what is supposed to be done in a certain situation.

Speaking of DUMB emails, this one actually came through this very morning on our building's personal announcement email address:

" From: Blah, Blobette
Sent: Thursday, November 15, 2012 6:59 AM
To: Blank-Announcements
Subject: For Sale



Good Morning,

I have some new never been worn ladies undergarments.



Please email for details.

Thanks!

Blobbette "


Our building has over 500 employees, possibly 600, working there. I'm sure that all of the men really enjoyed getting this email, and my DH and I were wondering what kind of "inquiries" Blobette got...... The whole situation has caused a lot of jokes...

[KaraBoo]

Document, document, document!!!

I always save my emails (for as long as my company allows - which is increasingly getting shorter and shorter over the years!). Saving these emails has saved my butt more times than I can count. I had one boss that stated, "if it's not in writing, it didn't happen" and she backed her employees up if they could produce the evidence - regardless of who was arguing with us. I remember she went toe-to-toe with one of the VPs one day because of documentation we had that the VP didn't. I learned early on - don't delete anything!

I just sent out an email today that my boss (who was CC'd as I wanted her to know what was going on) was highly impressed with - I'm probably going to save it as a template for future responses to the same issue as I know it will be happening more and more often. She even commented that we will probably have to change our written policy to reflect the changes and include some form of my response in the verbage.

So....not only has email saved my butt a time or two - it's helping me to get recognized in positive ways as well! ;D

[zibazinski]