Monday 14 February 2011

one or two then

So I've just gotten done sending out 140 e-mails.

Actually, it's a lot more than that in total, because I sent 40 on Friday as well, plus I've been replying to some of the people who already came back to me. But it was 140 of the standard e-mails this morning.

This is the part of my job I dislike the most, because it's so tedious sending them out, but it also get's really confusing. Because of how it has to be don, it's a lot of individual e-mails with individual replies, rather than some gigantic mail-merge. That means I have to reply individually as well as process anything they send back individually. I may well have to do some chasing for replies later as well.

It's all horribly tedious. A while ago when I was too busy to do proper blog posts it was because I was doing a similar job - it sucks up so much time it's silly.

What it does do is give you a fascinating insight into the world of e-mailing. I once heard that people only take in about 40% of an e-mail when they read it, and this sort of job really confirms that.

It's quite remarkable how many times people will come back having clearly not properly read what we want or what they need to do. Especially with things like this which are a little different to what we normally send them.

A classic example is people not processing dates - they ask when you want it for, even though there's a date on there, or they'll see Monday and assume you mean this Monday instead of next Monday.

I mean, I don't fundamentally mind - we all make mistakes - it's just because I'm going out to so many people, it sucks up even more time me having to answer their questions or correct them or whatever.

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