6 months ago I was very frustrated about the inaccuracy of how my sales numbers were being reported to our corporate offices. At that time I went to our office manager who was doing the reporting and brought it to her attention in a very friendly manner. She agreed to look in to it and get it resolved.
After about 2 months, I inquired again because nothing had changed since our last conversation. Once again she said she would look into it. At this point I also brought it to the attention of our local franchise owner, who we both report to.
After 2 more months I inquired a third time via email including the owner on the email. This time there was no response at all. No reply to the email nothing. So now I am at a point of sheer frustration and anger.
So........I decide to send another email, again icluding our boss. Since my mental state was less than ideal for this situation I knew I needed to be very careful with how I worded the email; so I carefully chose my words and sent the email off.
In a flash came back a scathing response from my office manager and to make matters worse she also copied our boss as well. (After all, I copied him on the original email.......another mistake on my behalf) Needless to say, I didn't help my situation any with the email, in fact I made it worse!!
So what did I learn? Well here it is in a nutshell:
- Always reread your emails and if need be sleep on them before you send them. You will save yourself a lot of grief and hard feelings.
- Don't send an email to do the job of what should be a face to face conversation. Had I picked up the phone or went to her in person, she would not have gotten angry with the way I made the third request for her help.
- There really is no need to copy the boss on emails that throw other people under the bus, it just show a lack of professionalism and judgement. The two of us, as adult human beings should have been able to work this out.
So, what email lessons have you had that the rest of us can learn from?
