Rou

One of the joys of a large corporation is working with others. Especially people you've never met or heard of before. Especially via the wonderful tool called email.

You see, when large groups of people spread out across hundreds of buildings interact, there are some areas of discontinuity.

For example, simple words and phrases have the same basic definitions, but totally different measurements.

For example: Critical. Bob can think that his request for information is critical, however, it’s nothing more than one of many such requests Dave gets every day. We’re all used to that. What I’m less prepared for is an ambush. You see, when HR is doing random audit testing via email, such requests go into my medium priority bin. I’ll get to it right after I get my high priority work taken care of.

This is place where the word critical is mislabeled. When I get into the office, I start bringing up the applications required to do my job. Things we’re paid to watch all the time. While they’re coming up, I check my email for anything with large business repercussions, or marked super-duper-mega-urgent. I finish setting up and make sure my job is taken care of and everything is alive and well. Then start whittling away at my inbox.

What I don’t appreciate is the ambush I received today. An automated audit email that automatically sends a read receipt to HR and informs me that I have 5 minutes to craft an email with the “critical” information they need. Of course that information isn’t remotely critical. It’s not even kinda sorta critical. It’s bullshit. In fact, they already have it. They just want ot see if *I* have it handy. Just a test to prove how quickly I’ll answer them.

It’s inconsiderate. It’s offish. And most importantly, it’s bad business. Maybe your standard office worker can put everything down for such requests. But if I do that carelessly, I can miss things. Part of my job is to be able to multitask and juggle half dozen things at the same time and not drop them. Adding additional items is aggravating. But that’s acceptable when I have time to schedule it. When it’s suddenly dropped in my lap without as much as a by-your-leave, and with implied but unstated repercussions against my performance evaluation, it’s totally unacceptable.

I know what they wanted. Test to make sure every random person the check had the information quickly available in case they needed it suddenly. Because corporate policy is that it should be within arms reach of your desk. It’s not really that important, but it make the uppity ups feel better I guess.

Lesson learned I guess. I won’t check my email until I have time free to react to bullshit from HR. This may mean that truly important messages will be dropped too. But hey, that’s the price of HR.