E-Nnoying! (or, Dealing With Breaches of Email Etiquette)

As you may know from my resources on maintaining a sense of humor, I love to laugh. Finding the absurd in everyday life is a great stress relief for me, and I recommend it to everyone who could use a little levity in their life. I also love sharing a good joke, as do many people who forward emails to me.

I like emails that contain genuinely funny jokes or profound sayings. The very best of them make my day.

I don't mind the hoax-busting emails. If there really is a virus to be avoided or an injustice in the world to be circumvented, I love to know about it. And if there isn't one, I love being the one who's savvy enough to check Snopes or About.com's Urban Legends site and share the results with the group.

I also love those 'amazing photos' emails, that show pictures of a tiny foot pressing out from the inside of a pregnant belly, or a pile of cats snuggling together. Call me a sucker for cheese, but I've been known to get a little verklempt with some of the more touching emails in that category.

However, lately I've encountered a few people who don't understand the art of forwarding appropriate materiel over email. (And I have a hunch that you have, too.) Perhaps because there's no face-to-face, real-time interaction with email, people are emboldened to send things that they wouldn't normally say to one's face. Political and religious emails sent to someone of a different political and religious persuasion fall into this category. As do emails that are negative toward people of a certain gender or race. Emails like these can definitely cause stress for the recipient, who must decide whether to stand up for their own views and engage in a conflict, or delete and allow an endless procession of additional, similarly inappropriate forwarded fodder.

I leave you with the following resources, and a question for you to answer in the comments or the forum: How have you handled this type of email in the past, and how has that worked for you?

Resources on Courtesy, from Elizabeth Scott and Others:

27 Email Pet Peeves That Tick People Off

Top 20 Rules of Email Etiquette

Office Humor: What's Inappropriate?

Assertiveness Training

Discuss In The Forum!

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