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Blogs by Zahala San Simone
Just One Of Those Days 9/6/2006 6:36:29 PM
A stream is a body of water...not a sea of emails! Enough said. You ever wonder why people opt not to take long vacations from work? I don't. Since the advent of email, being out of the office for more than one day is a nightmare.
I sometimes think people purposefully send emails to staff who are out of the office just to ensure that they 'spread the pain'. They're bitter because they had to come in, and they want to make sure that you get yours 'cause you were lucky enough to get a few days off!
That's what happened to me today. I took the Friday before the holiday, and the Tuesday after the holiday off. Oh, don't get me wrong, I knew I'd have emails galore when I got back, but I was sure that the damage would be minimal, since lots of folks took that same Friday off.
So, I reasoned, when I returned to the office, I would only be one day behind in my emails. I thought that I was a pretty smart cookie to take a few days off this way.
NOT!
Why not--you ask?
I FORGOT ABOUT THE STREAMS! (Ah yes, you say, the streams!)
Those are the emails where you have to start from the earliest date and read forward, or none of it will make sense, and you'll get really frustrated if you try to start from the top and read down, because you know you'll miss the one thing that started the stream in the first place.
You see email streams (or threads as they are also called) are never really started by the first email. It's always the fourteenth comment in a stream of 50, or the 32nd comment in a stream of 80, or the adding of a person's boss in the stream at the 23rd email that started the problem.
In any case, after you spend two hours reading the stream, and still don't know what's going on, your head is spinning and it's time to go to meetings. In the meantime, people are sending you emails that you have to read, that you want to read, but by the time you get out of your meetings, it's quitting time. And, here's where the payback really happens.
As your co-workers saunter happily by you, chirping their 'good-nights', they are quietly snickering at you, sitting sullenly in front of your pc. They know you want to go home, but you can't. They know, because they looked like you do now yesterday. And they decided not to spare you from the same pain they experienced.
So, here's my cry to those who are tempted to begin a 'stream' or a 'thread'--CAN IT! Nobody cares after the third email anyway!
Now that that's off my chest, I think I'll get some rest. These tired eyes need to 'stream' to dreamland!
