I am ill enough not to go to work, but not so ill that I have to stay in bed sucking industrial-strength 'hot lemon drinks' (i.e., hot lemon crack) through a bendy straw.
The day has been spent half-asleep, doing some work and having some conversations and coughing in the way that makes you feel the bottom of your lungs are going to come out of your mouth, but without any phlegm in them.
Monkeymother, still fully in possession of her faculties despite a life-long battle with absinthe addiction and a penchant for earlier episodes of Crossroads, sends advice:
"I now favour weak tea with lemon and honey. Less acid. Put tea bag and slices of lemon in cup. Pour on boiling water (I know grandmother/eggs). Don't poke tea bag, just let it lie there and sulk a bit. Take it out. Poke lemon a lot and add fat spoon of honey. Much nicer."
She is correct! It is delicious and soothing on the monkey throat, and I shall drink it for the rest of my days, laced with a little cheap whisky.
Illness aside, things have been much as usual on the email front. On an average day, I get about 250 work emails (most of which say nothing), 20 nice emails, and about 100 emails from various things that I have unsubscribed to, including Your Pony and Catnip Weekly.
Prompted by this quite brilliant post by the fragrant and delectable Ms Baroque, I was more than usually sensitive to the tone of emails I got today. Most are charming: polite, to the point, brief, with a "hi" or a "thanks".
Some are not. For e.g., without giving the detail away, today alone I received some emails today that went more or less like this:
In reponse to 3 days of work by 4 clever people:
Hi,
All the work you send us was wrong. Here are my comments:
Slide 11: where did you get that information? Change it.
Slide 12: Did you make it up?
Slide 13: I do not agree.
Please change it where I have said. I do not have time to discuss any of it.
Thanks
Knobbo
Or:
What is this. It is wrong. It is not what I said. Who had this conversation. I want to know why it was had, when I said it was not necessary. I want your reply now. Who is to blame?
Or, worst of all:
Hi! I have done this work. [A 300 page Powerpoint deck is attached.] Please read it and let me know what you think by 11 - I have arranged a meeting with over 500 people and have to present it then.
Cheers!
Spanner
It is too much to bear! I shall lie down and cough and remember the days of faxes, letters, and good manners.
Pip pip!
NWM
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7 comments:
Dear NWM,
Even in illness you are more interesting than most people, and it is a joy to me that you liked my post. It is a resolution of mine to keep up my 'professional' blog better this year, but frankly the work environment can get too depressing for blogging about - especially if, like me, you have scuppered your chances of anonymity.
Hope you recover very quickly. I personally swear by chicken soup, as I'm sure you know.
(the word recognition is 'bessess' - which you are.)
feel better soon, little monkey. Use brandy instead of whiskey in your tea, it is much smoother. Tell work to f.o. and leave you alone whilst you recover!
Ah yes, I remember those far off days of 1995 as well. I used to work in a massive Gas Board office and email hadn't been invented, or at least hadn't penetrated the Gas Board. On the rare occasions it was deemed absolutely necessary to communicate in writing with one's colleagues the practice was to write them... a memo. Which you would then print out copies of (an operation which seemed positively space age in its techological daringness) and hand-deliver to the desks of the intended recipients. I feel like I'm making this up but am pretty sure it is true.
Oh and er, get well soon, by the way.
I'm a bit appalled at the level of rudeness you describe. I work in a School of Divinity which is very decent of them as I am the most Godless individual ever to walk their hallowed halls.
Email has only just permeated the vestries and studies of this institution and its followers, so while I am occasionally on the receiving end of an evangelical rant about the imminence of hell for those who are not "in Christ" (apparently I'm going straight there and will not visit purgatory on the way as it has been abolished...who knew?!...sorry I digress) nevertheless there is always a "yours sincerely" or a "peace be with you" to soften the invective. Which is nice.
I hope you feel quite restored very soon.
WIth best wishes for your continued good health. Mrs B.
I think I'm your 5th reader.
Now I know that you are close to Rob McElwee I will continually pester you for information, even though you are ill. What does he wear below the waist? Why does he engage in such weird meteorological banter on the TV weather? Why does he lower his head and peer ominously through his eyebrows at the cowering viewers on the sofa?
It will be difficult to bear in mind that he is a very nice man when we wish to make suggestive comments just before retiring to bed after the 10 o'clock news. So I will imagine that the one on the TV is the evil twin.
Get well soon!
Ever since I read this post and Ms Baroque's connected one, I have been being extra-specially careful to be polite and friendly in all my emails.
I always am though; I always do greetings and sign-offs and proper full-fledged correctly-spelt(apart from typos) wordage. But I confess I'm rather relieved when I have colleagues who are happy to communicate basic functional info in short sentences with no trimmings. It does make life a little simpler, and I feel a sense of freedom when I reply to like with like. So much easier than having to go knock on someone's door and then hovering awkwardly until you can have their full attention, only to ask some tedious little question. And I really used to hate it when people came and hovered at my elbow when I was trying to concentrate on something important.
But still... um... I know what you mean.
Yours sitting-on-the-fence-ily,
Ms Prevaricator.
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