by J. Thorn
Reply or Die (in 24)
If your mother-in-law forwards you a recipe for shortcake or a “joke” her priest thought was funny, by all means, delete it. However, in the business world (including in education) you must reply to all emails pertaining to the institution. Only a complete douchebag does not respond to an email. Think about it. A colleague of yours took the time to type out a message. They did not pick up the phone or stop you in the hall. They wrote you. That deserves a reply, even if it’s, “Got it. Busy now, but will respond later.” It took me 1.5 seconds to type that out. Do it, you lazy bastard, and do it within twenty-four hours of receiving it. It’s common courtesy, and if you do not respond to emails, don’t expect others to respond to yours.
Don’t Fuck with My Head
I spent the majority of my adult life in a drunken haze. I play heavy metal music on stage with Marshall amps (Endorsement? Free gear? C’mon, Marshall, hook a brother up). If you reply to an email I sent and do not have the original quoted below it, I probably will have no clue what you are talking about. The bigger question is why you would do such a thing. By default, most email programs include the original email in a reply. Why would you change that setting? Are you being charged by the word for every email you send?
Be Buddha: Lose Your Attachments
Why are you sending me Word documents as email attachments? For the love of God, stop. When I see the little paperclip next to a .docx file extension, I want to puke. My favorite is getting a Word attachment that contains a paragraph of Times New Roman twelve-point font, the same formatting that’s in the body of the email. Why? Email is meant to be efficient and to deliver information rapidly. If you want me to peruse a paragraph, type it in the body of the email. Furthermore, most email these days is formatted in HTML, which means you can send the formatting too, if you so desire.
Large attachments, such as movie clips or audio files, hog system resources and bog down the email server for everyone. Put it on a shared or cloud drive (s tech term. Nine out of ten people reading this put the book down and took a sedative) and send an email with a shortcut to its location.
STOP DOING THIS
Got it?
Quit Being So Needy
I love nothing more than hitting the “ignore request” button when a person sends me an email demanding a read receipt. How fucking worried are you about my email-reading habits? Are you so insecure that you need to know when I’ve read your shitty little message? If I don’t do what I am supposed to do, hold my feet to the fire, but quit treating me like the fat kid who had to have the teacher pin the note to his shirt before getting on the bus to go home. And just so you know, most email applications allow the user to set an automatic block on all read receipts, so suck it.
In addition, showing me a little red exclamation point is not going to get my attention. I scan my inbox without prejudice. Subject lines labeled, “I can see Brenda’s panties today” get the same attention as, “Staff meeting extended until 6:00 p.m.” (I’m lying about this, but you get my point.) Sending your email as “urgent” is only slightly less infuriating than using all caps.
Watch Your Carbon Footprint
Back in the day when dinosaurs ruled the earth and cavemen had to use their feet as brakes (known as the Flintstone Stop), “carbon copies” flooded the office. You pressed really hard on the top copy, and the carbon fiber between sheets would duplicate the writing on subsequent pages. You could almost see it.
Nowadays, people see the “cc” and “bcc” in their email applications and have no clue what they mean or how to use them. Always use “cc” to cover your ass. For example, if an angry parent demands an explanation as to why Bobby got 89 percent on his history paper and is forever scarred, the grade keeping him out of Princeton, reply with a “cc” to the principal or division head. This protects against an irate mom who claims she was ignored.
When sending a blanket email to lots of people, use “bcc.” This means that they will all get it but will not see the other people you have emailed. I once sent a mass email with my new email address to all of my family, friends, acquaintances, and assholes I knew. Instead of using “bcc,” I used the “to” box. One of the wise-guys hit “reply all” (the “reply all” section is up next) with a sexual joke about my dead grandmother that went to all of the people that received my first email. My mom read the joke about her dead mother. Nice.
Shout It from the Mountaintop
If you can see the other people who received the same email that you did, respond with “reply all.” When someone emails to a group using the “to” box, they want everyone to get the response, otherwise they need to have an additional email exchange with you, which they then must share with the larger group you were supposed to email anyways.
Breaking the Chains (Dokken fucking rules!)
If, after fifteen years of using email, you are still forwarding chain letters, you are a fucking asshole. Sorry, but there is no reason to be sending this shit any longer. Just because you think pictures of dogs dressed in people’s clothes are funny, this does not mean everyone in your address book does, too. I refuse to read them anymore. They get filtered to my trash and deleted daily. I don’t want “real” pictures of UFOs flying over Seattle. I don’t want to know about the mystery trucker who gave the retarded kid in the diner an envelope with ten grand in it. I don’t want to know how men think differently than women about shopping. Please cease and desist before your family stops talking to you.
Batch It
This idea came from The 4-Hour Workweek, by Timothy Ferris. In the book, he suggests batching your email as a way of increasing productivity. Love or hate Ferris, he has golden nuggets of wisdom in the book, this being one of them.
Check your email at noon and then four. That’s it. Set your email application to “offline,” or keep it shut until lunch and right before you go home. Get the inbox notification monkey off your back, and quit begging for attention like a Tiger Woods mistress. You will find that many problems sent in emails to groups of people resolve themselves within two or three replies. If you check into the conversation at noon by reading the most recent “re” of the subject line, you will most likely save yourself the time and energy of replying, as someone will have solved the problem for you. This technique alone will allow you to recoup an enormous amount of time in your day and free you up for other addictions, like the CrackBerry.
The Blacker the Berry, the More Annoying the Asshole
Nothing screams “asshole” like the BlackBerry prayer (except someone screaming “asshole”). You have seen this: two hands meeting around the black plastic, head down. This could be the single most annoying, addictive piece of technology ever.
If you own a BlackBerry, iPhone, or Android, I would like to suggest you mute the volume and then shove it up your ass. If that does not work for you, I have a few other suggestions.
According to an article in the Charlotte Observer, Robert Half Management Resources polled 150 senior executives about their opinions on using BlackBerrys in meetings. Eighty-six percent said people they work with often check and respond to email during meetings, and 31 percent said that the practice is “never OK.” How necessary is it to glance at that screen during a meeting? How often do you get an email or text message that needs your immediate attention?
From an article on CrackBerry.com (yes, the site is real) come a few common-sense lifesavers for those of you who cannot part with the device. Make sure the sound is off, and keep it in your pants. The term “masturberry” is used to describe people who pretend to be listening in a meeting or presentation but are really fidgeting with their BlackBerrys. We know you are not listening, so quit pretending you are while updating your Facebook status. (Facebook jumped the shark a long time ago. If you are still infatuated with it, you are a loser.)
If you use a Bluetooth headset, people are making fun of you. Even Captain Kirk looked like an asshole when this shit was on Star Trek. (I don’t know if it ever was on Star
Trek, but it should have been.) In addition, if you whip out the Berry in a social situation, people will hate you. Quit big-timing us and turn the damn thing off while you are out at dinner or having drinks with friends. Plus, it is simply rude to have your head down when you are supposed to be conversing with real humans.
***
Conflict is never fun (unless you play in the NFL, in which case it’s a job requirement). Most of us are raised to avoid it, to deescalate, or acquiesce. Compliance is the grease that keeps the wheels of society moving forward. However, it is too easy to overlook the fact that significant change does not take place without conflict. Numerous historical examples, such as the women’s suffrage movement of the early twentieth century, the rising protests of the Vietnam War, and the cultural relevance of “Pants on the Ground,” prove that it takes conflict to evolve. If everyone sought conflict, the result would be anarchy. But if we allow an identifiable contingent of our leaders, coworkers, and teachers to push the edge of “acceptable,” we might find a loopback dynamic of change that benefits everyone.
JUST DON’T DO IT WITH ALL CAPS!
Wired
After a life of crime as Tracy Marrow and before a long-running stint as 5-0 on Law and Order SVU, Ice-T released Home Invasion in 1993. On one track, the rapper grumbles, “Suck my motherfuckin’ dick.” I couldn’t think of a better place to listen to this track than in an elementary school.
The business manager of my school in the mid-‘90s was a unique character. Born and bred in the Northeast and an enlightened member of the Good Ol’ Boys, Kevin had a sick sense of humor. He loved beer, women, and pranks. If you have ever gotten into a pissing contest with someone like this, you know that the stakes escalate quickly.
I had always been a closet techie and knew my way around the PC. The school was an Apple shop, but the business office relied on Windows. Back in the day, audio on the PC was a luxury and not something people expected. Getting a song from a disc onto the computer was tantamount to the parting of the Red Sea. As soon as the idea popped into my head, I knew I had to do it.
I grabbed my copy of Home Invasion and slammed it into the 2X CD-ROM drive on my Packard Ball 386. (I know what you’re thinking. That was one sexy PC. I had a 250-MB hard drive. 250 MB, bitch!) I managed to save “suck my motherfuckin’ dick” as a .wav file and copied it to a floppy disc (which was really hard plastic). I took the disc with me to school like a pusher concealing his stash.
Kevin’s office was across the hall from the headmaster. I wish I could say this factored into my plan, but it did not. Looking back on it, it could have cost me my job, but I was too young to think more than a day ahead, anyway. I snuck in after the maintenance staff had unlocked the offices but before Kevin had arrived. I copied the heinous .wav file from the floppy disc to the system folder on his C: drive. I went into the primitive control panel and chose the Ice-T .wav file to play on startup. The final preparation was jacking the PC speakers up to ten before sneaking out of the office. The entire operation took no more than three minutes, and nobody was the wiser.
I remember teaching the first few periods with a giddy stutter, like a tween anticipating that virgin trip to the mall. I joked and laughed with my colleagues, most of whom annoyed the shit out of me on normal days. I kept one eye on the door, waiting for Kevin to come through the hall distraught by the phantom voice ordering him to suck some dick. Motherfuckin’ dick, at that.
Morning spilled into afternoon, and I had no sighting of Kevin. At this point, I believe the first shadow of doubt descended on the day.
What if the headmaster heard it and fired Kevin on the spot? He’s probably being brought up on charges of lewd conduct, being grilled by the local police at this very moment. . .
These thoughts worked their way into my head like a song from Cats. I taught the rest of the day as a mindless automaton (more like a typical teacher), not really thinking or caring. By three that afternoon, I could not take it anymore. I had to visit Kevin.
When I first saw him, I knew I had scored. He smiled his George Thorogood-esque toothy grin and shook his head.
“I knew it was you,” he said.
“How?”
“Who else could it have been?”
“Tell me about it,” I demanded.
The Old Man of the Sea began to reel in his catch.
“Well, I sat down at my computer after saying good morning to Daniel.”
“What was the headmaster doing in his office so early?” I asked with a bit of trepidation.
“Don’t know. He usually doesn’t come in until nine.”
I shook my head, feeling my heart speed up with a jagged lurch.
“Like I was saying, I sat down at the computer and booted up.”
“Yeah?”
“I almost dropped my coffee mug to the floor. I thought someone was under my desk. By the time I heard ‘dick,’ I realized it came from the computer speakers. I shut the thing down and restarted it.”
“And you heard it again, right?” I asked.
Kevin was setting me up better than an Ali rope-a-dope.
“Oh yeah, I heard it again. For some reason, I looked up after an unknown black man instructed me to suck him off, and that was when I realized Daniel had been standing there the entire time.”
When you hear people say, “The blood drained from his face,” it’s hard to imagine how that feels. I no longer had to. My school lunch of mini-hotdogs and smiley fries tumbled into my small intestine, forcing me to keep it in check. Kevin saw my expression and went in for the kill.
“Holy shit, man,” was the only phrase I could force over my trembling blue lips.
“He asked me if I did that, and I told him I had no idea where the disgusting line came from.”
I sat still, unable to breathe.
“Daniel said that he thought he knew who might be behind it.”
“Did you tell him I did it?”
“No, of course not. I like you, man. Don’t want you to get fired and then blacklisted from teaching.”
I am not sure if that is the exact line Kevin used, but it was something to that effect and a stroke of pure, evil genius.
“Thanks, brother. Thanks. Shit, man. I don’t, I don’t,” I stumbled.
Kevin did a masterful job of holding it in.
“I’m sure it’ll be OK. He probably can’t prove it was you.”
If there was any doubt in Kevin’s mind as to whether or not it was me, he was about to get confirmation. Brilliant statement, absolutely brilliant.
“As long as nobody saw me come in here, I don’t think he can prove it was me. They wouldn’t dust the keyboard for prints or something like that, would they?”
“No,” Kevin replied. “I doubt it. As long as a kid didn’t hear that and then tell his mom, it probably won’t be more than a temporary suspension without pay.”
As Neil Young would say, the needle and the damage done. I was officially scared shitless.
“If you hear anything, you’ll tell me, right?” I asked, on the verge of shitting myself in order to be shitless.
“Of course,” Kevin said, fighting the urge to bust out on me.
I scuttled from his office and immediately began to plan my defense. I would say that I copied the wrong song from the CD, that I hadn’t intended to use the vulgar line.
Of course it was an accident,I rehearsed in my head. I’m a teacher and would never do something like that intentionally.
I cannot remember what I did that night, but I am sure it involved lots of panic attacks and heavy drinking.
The next morning, I walked to the mailboxes and saw my own doom when the piece of paper sticking out of mine had “From the Office of the Headmaster” stamped on the top. In a hastily scribbled hand, the note said, “J.—We need to talk TODAY.”
I ran to the headmaster’s secretary and secured the earliest appointment possible. If I was going to hang, I wanted to get it over with as quickly as possible. Returning twenty minutes la
ter, the secretary escorted me into the office where the headmaster sat at his desk.
“Please, sit down,” he said with the dignity and power of a man conditioned to using it on adolescents.
I folded my hands across my lap and stared up at the Harvard diploma hanging above a faux fireplace. Every good headmaster’s office has one (faux fireplace and Harvard diploma, in case you were wondering).
“Whenja getit?”
Nice. That was the best slurry I could force out of my mouth while pointing at the wall. Daniel paused and raised his eyebrows. I thought he looked a bit jovial for what was about to take place, but you never know.
“Do you know,” he began with a pause long enough to make me want to crap my pants, “the rapper, Ice-T?”
I think I may have giggled and then shuffled my feet on the beige plush carpeting. Things from this point on are a little fuzzy in my memory.
“Yeah.”
“Are you a fan of his?”
If Daniel could have seen my CD collection (it’s just like a playlist on your iPod, except each band has its own shiny circle, and each circle has multiple songs on it. It comes with lyrics and artwork, and many CDs in a cardboard box makes moving a bitch) he would have been aghast that Ice-T was considered adult contemporary compared to the other jewel cases on the shelf.
“I’ve listened to his stuff.”
“The recording that asks the listener if he would like to ‘suck my motherfuckin’ dick’?”
I heard Kevin’s snort before I could process what the headmaster of this traditional, conservative, Northeastern day school had said. My head turned like an owl sniffing a mouse, and our eyes met. Kevin had two tears running down his face and seemed to be holding his belly laugh in with two hands. I spun back to the headmaster, who had an index card covering his mouth while his eyes squinted.
