From: "Kevin Tarr" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> I sent this e-mail last night, with the subject work e-mail > > Not about list e-mail, but general work e-mail. I got chastised by a boss > because I was contacting a user using e-mail instead of calling directly. > The text of the e-mail was about, drumroll, setting up a face to face > meeting. I really felt like telling the boss to take a hike. His way > mattered 20 years ago when you had to use a phone, but 70% of the time > e-mail is appropriate. > > How do others feel? I know not all situations warrant it but if you have > established that the receiver regularly checks e-mail and will respond, > isn't e-mail okay? >
I actually prefer e-mail for business communication. It's far more preferable to phone communication IMO, because it leaves a written record you can refer back to should the need arise. If it is an urgent matter that needs an immediate response (within 24 hours). Then phone is probably a better means of communication.
The problem there is that the parties involved may not agree on the level of urgency. Frex, telemarketers, spammers, bill collectors, candidates for next week's mayoral election, etc., believe that their messages are of utmost urgency, while most of those who receive calls from such often wish that their phones had a "Caller Delete" feature which would, at the touch of a button, send a 10,000-volt pulse back through the line to incinerate the @#$%&*!! caller.
Or for a less facetious example: I recall one time when a term paper a student had put in my mailbox had gotten lost (it later turned out that it had gotten caught by the paperclip another student had used to hold her paper together and I thought it was simply part of a bunch of auxiliary material the second student had attached to her paper). One morning when I went into the office, I found a message concerning the lost paper in my mailbox and returned the call and said that I had taken all the papers home to grade and I would search again for the missing one when I got there. About the time I was trying to maneuver through traffic on one infamously busy ordinary highway to get on the interstate, my cell phone rang, and in the circumstances I didn't think it safe to try to get it out of the holster on my belt and answer it. Before I reached home -- about a 30�-minute drive -- it rang twice more . . .
-- Ronn! :)
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