In the early 1960s, John Q. Email revolutionized the world. He sent an encoded message across a computer network to a user 3 feet away. It said, “Hey, want to hear a joke about my cat?”
After 42 messages and 18 cat jokes, email had been invented and John Q. was dead, victim of a co-worker who screamed, “I just want to do some work!”
The weapon of choice: a letter opener. Rest in peace, John Q.
OK, so I made all that up. But it’s how I envision the scourge we know as email getting its start. And how I picture the demise of the doofus who did this to all of us. Who unleashed this uncontrollable tsunami upon the world. Who figured he was doing everyone “a big favor,” yet really just created a communication vehicle for scams, credit card offers and cryptic messages from co-workers that read, “So, what do you think?”
I think you shouldn’t have sent me that email!!!
This was the fictional scenario I invented one early morning as I sat at the computer hitting delete as quickly as I could on work and personal email. It was a desperate attempt to keep my inbox messages to no more than six. Part of a pledge I made to always see a sliver of empty space, rather than an endless stream of unanswered messages. This was my solution after hundreds of messages backed up in an electronic junk jam. I feared warnings like: “Your email has exceeded its maximum limit. It just crushed the Faroe Islands.”
No doubt you feel this way, too. I’m sure of this after reading a New York Times column titled, “End the Tyranny of 24/7 Email.” It read like a manifesto inciting cubicle dwellers everywhere to rise up and overthrow our inbox overlords.
OK, again more fiction, but it day say shlubs like me spend 28 percent of their work week shoveling through email. And that on average, people check email 74 times a day. Seventy-friggin’-four times! Thanks to smartphones, workers are also tied to email 13.5 hours a day, and one study says 38 percent of people even check emails while at the dinner table. Thirteen percent of those people haven’t eaten a proper meal in over two years!
But it talked about solutions, too, like one German company’s vacation email policy. When you go away, your emails are automatically routed to someone else and then deleted from your inbox so there’s no mountain when you return. Unfortunately, the person who got all your vacation emails will be waiting for you with a billy club.
I like the idea. And it got me thinking about another solution: Sending out automatic replies to all emails that simple say: “Did you use your brain before you sent out this drivel! What went so wrong in your childhood?”
That should cut down on some. So, what don’t you think? Ready to join the revolution with me? Help overthrow the evil inbox overlords? Return peace to the Internet? If so, send me an email with times you can meet, and I’ll try to go easy on the cat jokes.