E-Mails!

[Phoenix84]

I took an inventory of my work e-mails. I have 47 e-mails in my "trash" folder and over 200 e-mails in my inbox. To be fair I've read most of them, just haven't deleted them yet.

But it is common to get so many e-mails at work? I get at least a dozen a day if not more. I sometimes feel like it's a zombie invasion and I'm the lone survivor with a shotgun.

Makes me wonder what life was like before e-mails.

[susanb]

Common to get emails: Yes, I get loads of emails also. I also send lots of them, so I am spreading the pain.

Life before emails: I worked in the pre-email at work era (or at least before it was common), but as a high school/college student restaurants. I am guessing there were more phone calls? It seems like people avoid calling strangers as much as possible these days. If practical (not a lot of follow up questions), I prefer email.

I think I will go shoot one at some poor soul now.....

[Deleted]

Phoenix, a lot of people send emails to people just to "CYA".

I know a LOT of work emails are unnecessary but you might want to think twice about deleting them.

When I worked in an office I'd go through mine at the end of the year. Anything ongoing I left, obviously. The others, I filed by year (two years back though, I left all the previous year's emails alone).

[midjd]

Depends on the job, I'm sure... but yeah, some days I feel like I'm just treading water. I typically get 50-60 emails a day, about 30 of them are ones I actually need to read. I'll send another 25-30 emails a day. If I take a vacation day, I usually spend most of the next day catching up.

I don't know what everyone did before email. Since the people I supervise work all over the state, not having email would make things very difficult. Some things can be accomplished by phone, but it's nice to have a paper trail (or be able to forward a single response when you get the same question from a ton of people). Plus I HATE talking on the phone.

[Phoenix84]

"Phoenix, a lot of people send emails to people just to "CYA"."

Yes, you're right. That is especially true since I work in a regulatory field. Pretty much my whole job is covering my agencies ass and being an enforcer. Sounds like some of you have it just as bad if not worse. I'd say in a typical day I get 20-30 e-mails.

One thing that bugs me is when you send someone an e-mail and they just reply "thanks."

My guess is phone calls were somewhat common, but I imagine people wouldn't contact you unless it was important enough to call. So you probably got less trivial stuff.

I wonder if there's a way to archive e-mails by year. We use lotus notes.

[susanb]

We don't send/get many trivial emails at my work because people accountability is pretty divided and pretty clear. We are small enough that none of us really share job responsibilities or skill sets.

It is funny that you hate short replies because I hate the idea that everyone need to reply to everything. I get a lot of emails that I don't reply to and I don't expect one for every little thing. For example, invoices. As long as I don't dispute the charges, I will reply with a payment.

[midjd]

One thing that bugs me is when you send someone an e-mail and they just reply "thanks."

That bugs me too, although I'm guilty of it when I receive invoices (our payroll is SO slow, an acknowledgement cuts down on the "where's my money?" emails.)

I wonder if there's a way to archive e-mails by year. We use lotus notes.

There is... I would have to poke around a bit to refamiliarize myself with LN (we switched to Outlook last year) but you can archive by any time period. Remind me next week if you want and I'll PM some instructions to you.

[Deleted]

I don't remember how I did it (it was three years ago) but we were on LN at the time.

It's also interesting to remember that pervasive internet use happened at about the same time that pervasive cell phone use happened.

IOW, in those dark, dark ages, people still somehow managed to function, live, work and love WITHOUT either the internet, or cell phones.

*Sorry, I'm busy picking out the dinosaur bones from my body*

[Sum Dum Gai]

I have 47 e-mails in my "trash" folder and over 200 e-mails in my inbox. To be fair I've read most of them, just haven't deleted them yet.

That's what my inbox would look like two days after getting a new account. I have somewhere around 3000 emails in my inbox right now. I try to purge everything older than 3 months at the end of every month, unless it's an ongoing thing that I need to hold on to. I'm not great at doing this consistently every month though, so at any given time I'm likely to have the last four full months worth, plus however far we are into the current month.

[alabamagal]

When i worked for the government there were TONS of email. People would send out email for everything and then cc everyone else, except for the ones they left out would be offended and email others complaining about the others. Many people would get several hundreds a day. Managing email was a major effort for many. That may have been all they did.

The worst offender was a admin assistant in the department of 130 people (all on email) who would send out every email read receipt, even if it was just information, i.e. "Retirement cake for Joe at 10 am" and it would be read-receipt to the entire department.

[Deleted]

It's insane.

[Deleted]

I keep a messy inbox. I have about 5000 in my inbox with a few hundred that I haven't read, plus another few thousand filed in separate folders. I need an assistance to help me.

[Apple]

Now that my temp promotion is up, I need to go through and organize my email. I have several hundred--the most important ones I flag, the rest I keep because I need something in them--a charge code, technical info, etc. Everyone pretty much knows that if I was involved in a job, and there were any emails about it, I can get them info within a few minutes--I have a whole mess of folders along the side that I organize them into. I had to provide some info on a job I worked on 7 years ago just last month. I hate that for every TR I request I get at least two emails about--one for funding and one for approval.

[Deleted]

In our company of 21,000 FTE's, the average person send/receive total is 180 per work day.

[Phoenix84]

"IOW, in those dark, dark ages, people still somehow managed to function, live, work and love WITHOUT either the internet, or cell phones."

I know, I like to daydream every once and a while about a time when you weren't always attached at the hip to the electronic network, and if someone bothered you it had to be important, not telling you so and so that you've never met in HR is having a baby, and getting e-mails from the IT department several states away.

"When i worked for the government there were TONS of email. People would send out email for everything and then cc everyone else."

Oh God yes, I get those too, being cc'ed or Bcc'ed on e-mails that don't concern me. I used to do this but have tried to curb the habbit.

[Phoenix84]

Well, I guess I manage okay then getting 30 a day and having a few hundred. At least it's a common thing that we office dwellers have to deal with .

I know it's even worse for the managers. I heard our chief gets 100-200 a day.

[illinicheme]

47 in trash and 200 in inbox doesn't even scratch the surface of email insanity.

[Formerly SK]

Jul 13, 2012 20:23:41 GMT -5 ArchietheDragon said:

I keep a messy inbox. I have about 5000 in my inbox with a few hundred that I haven't read, plus another few thousand filed in separate folders. I need an assistance to help me.

I'm a SAHM and I have 2364 emails in my inbox, even after deleting 20ish/day. I have no idea how many are in my various file folders - my Amazon folder alone would have tons since you get 2 email for ever purchase.