Lynn Espinoza is a broadcast news veteran with more than a decade of media, presentation and executive coaching experience. She has developed personal coaching sessions for Fortune 100 C-level executives, corporate communicators of all kinds, doctors, lawyers and leaders in non-profit.
Flame Mail
Posted on April 30, 2008. Filed under: Latest News
An e-mail crossed my inbox this morning - the likes of which I haven’t seen for a long time. It was not addressed specifically to me. I am part of a large distribution list, and this mail went out to all of us. You don’t need more details than this: It started when an incredibly hard-working teacher mailed parents, asking for help for an event to raise money for an important student program. Another parent, angry that his name and address appeared in the distribution list, sent a vicious response to the teacher and parent volunteer. It was mean from the beginning, and here’s how it ended:
Idiot!
Flame mail was much more common in the early days of e-mail. Fortunately, most of us have evolved since then. This incident serves as a reminder to chill before sending that angry email. Better - chill and then just pick up the phone and talk things through.
What are your e-mail horror stories?
2 Responses to “Flame Mail”
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Avoid Reunion.com. A social networking site (one of the many)
So I notice a box on my facebook page which asks “Who’s searching for you?” I THINK it’s a part of Facebook. I click the link. It asks for my gmail password- which is what I use on Facebook– and suddenly it steals my whole address book and sends out emails to all my gmail contacts that I want them to join Reunion.com. I immediately sent out a BCC to all those listed in my book and apologized and said IGNORE. How much social networking can we do on the “Internets?”
Lynn,
Your recommendation to pick up the phone is such a good one - and yet it’s often “easier” to fire off a rant or an abusive tirade in an email. It’s more work to make a more direct connection, but so often this is far and away the best way to diffuse a heated situation.
And, Eric -
That -is- a horror story, one that many Facebook users have experienced. Reunion.com is one of many, many websites using Facebook “apps”, as they are called, to their advantage. Apps are easy to install and often include this kind of hidden trigger designed to get you to hand over your email contacts. Even if you read the fine print, the ploy to grab your contacts usually requires that you click a consent button of some kind, and it’s often well disguised.
There is a recent article reprinted in the Seattle Times about this widespread problem. http://snurl.com/28toe [link to seattletimes.nwsource.com]
You are not alone!
Mark McLaren