March 17, 2010

• Who’s Been Looking Through My Email?

  If you haven’t noticed, someone has been looking through your email too.  It’s your boss!  If you work for a major company, then they are bound to have email filters.  Gone are the days in your cube where you could forward emails of Polish jokes, Mexican jokes, Chinese jokes, Black jokes, dumb blonde jokes, fat people pictures, people with weird tattoos and piercings, etc.   Your work email is now officially boring. 

  I’m figuring most of you are already aware of all of this, but if you never really thought about it, then now’s the time.   Back in the days, people used to spend all their work time on their phone and almost get fired for it.  Nowadays, it’s probably safer to waste work time on the phone vs. exchanging email messages with your co-workers and friends.  Your emails are 10x more likely to get audited.  If you’re on the phone, everyone probably thinks you’re talking to a vendor, client, or resolving a problem for a customer.

  Last month two of my co-workers got fired for an email exchange.  Some email printout about generalizations of a certain race/culture were left on the printer.  Someone saw it, thought it inappropriate, and left it anonymously on a supervisor’s desk.  Then they began a trace of where the email came from.  This required going through everyone in the department’s emails, trashed emails, etc. to find the related attachment.   Nope, not my department, whew! 

  Poke, poke, poke and you are bound to find more than you were looking for.  Like when you were looking for money in your parent’s underwear drawer and found your dad’s condoms or your mom’s dildo.  Well, in this case, the search for the email attachment unearthed disturbing email conversations between two employees/friends.   Lo and behold, there was the attachment.  And a few emails away there were some crass and stupid generalization emails about black people.  Then one lady went on to say to her friend, ”I’m gonna try and get that ***blank name*** black person fired if it’s the last thing I do.” 

  What year are we in… 2010?  How stupid can you be?  Management was stunned when they found about all that and then some.  The person who said that doesn’t even have the power to fire anyone, which means she was plotting something.  It took a couple weeks of email research, but once it was discovered, both long time employees were fired the next day.  

  Racism and prejudice don’t surprise me.  Do all black people eat watermelon and fried chicken?  I don’t know, but I eat it too.  Do all Asians have to use siracha when they eat? (I prefer straight red chili flakes in oil)  Why are brunettes smarter?  I have my own generalizations that I don’t think are “that” bad.  Don’t you?  We all do to some degree.  But even if you think that, even if you talk about it with your closest friends, how stupid can you be that you’d put it on a work email?  Not professional, not a equal opportunity environment, opens employer up to prejudice liability.   Seriously…  how dumb can you be. 

  This is my plea to you…  Don’t send dumb emails.  Heck, you might not even want to open the crazy ones that your friends send.  If someone walks by while you’re reading the email, they could be offended just by seeing it.  Like a picture of a guy sitting on a bike with plumber’s crack.  A cartoon of two Olympic Mascots making out.  That leprechaun wishing you good luck if you forward this email to ten people today. Even if you don’t respond, you could put your job in jeopardy. 

  Don’t talk crap about your boss via email, don’t message your GF that you want to screw her brains out tonite, don’t tell email your lunch buddy in the next cube that new girl in customer service is hot, don’t admit how drunk you were last night, don’t make fun of the fatties at work, don’t call peoples of certain races dumb, no more fag jokes, if you have to think about it, then just say no.  Whatever you do, just don’t send it through your work email address. 

  I’m not the IT guy nor the boss and even I know my married in debt co-worker with a failing marriage cheated on her husband and banged the married lead sales exec.  How?  Because the IT guys saw the email and told me about it over a few beers.   And then I told the whole world on Xanga. 

  • 12:00 pm
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