Thank you, Grinch

I'll never forget this one fella back in my grad school days. I sent a message out in December 1996, wishing all the recipients a Merry Christmas.

This fella writes back and says, "Please don't send me any messages that are not business related. I receive too much e-mail as it is."

Thank you, Mister Grinch.

He reminds me of another guy that I met more recently. At this second fella's company, the receptionist would occasionally send out e-mail messages saying "So-and-so will be out of the office tomorrow. Please be aware of this" or words to that effect. Well, fella #2 told the receptionist (indeed, the entire company) "Please do not include me in these types of messages. I already receive a lot of e-mail."

His motivations were good, but as you can probably see, honoring this request would create a lot of complications. So the company president wrote back, saying (in effect) "No, do not exclude him from these mailings. It only takes a few seconds to read them, and this is they kind of information that everyone should know. Besides, excluding any employee's name from these mailings creates unnecessary work for our receptionist."

That was exactly the right response.