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Friday, October 10, 2008

How not to get a laptop.

At work, I've got a perfectly fine little laptop as my primary system. Unfortunately, it bluescreens fairly regularly, and despite having 2 gigs of RAM, can't handle opening some of the huge files I've been working with at my job. These complaints worked their way up my organization, until I was told I could get a new system, a powerful workstation laptop with more RAM, a bigger screen, it would be glorious.

A few weeks go by, and I get an email from some one in my company I'd never talked to before. They ask how often I travel for work. I think to myself, 'oh, this must be about the laptop'. I glance at the from field, see something about Hank there, so I start the email, 'Hi Hank!'. I answer honestly, that I have not been asked to travel for work, but that I sometimes work from home, and that I carry my system home nightly in case I'm needed to address any after hours issues. I hit send.

A few emails later, I see an email from my boss's boss. He tells me not to respond to the first email, that he'll take care of it. Oh. I respond to him that I had already responded, and apologized.

A few emails later, Hank responds. Danielle Hanks. Danielle tells me that she doesn't think I need a new laptop, and that I'll get some more RAM for my current, Leapfrog of a laptop. Realizing I had called her Hank, I pretty much decide it's not worth fighting about.

To sum up, I advise you to at least glance at all the messages in your inbox before responding to the oldest. I also suggest you look carefully at the from field before addressing an email to someone you do not know. It might also help to not be doing three things at once while you're answering email.

1 comment:

Unknown said...

One of the main reasons I've switched to Gmail as my only mail client is the way it handles conversations. Stuff stays together and you can easily read through an entire conversation before you reply, which, I've found really reduces the chance of doing that.

Also, read up on "Inbox Zero." I don't follow that plan exactly, but I have found it very beneficial to use that mindset: I'm not reading email; I'm processing it. I'm looking at it and deciding what needs to be done, and then doing all the stuff that needs to be done later, after it has been processed.

Finally: That sucks. Sorry. I bet you can still get one, though.

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