Electronic Etiquette

Posted by John

After the recent layoffs things have been a bit hectic around the office to say the least.  Everyone is having to pick up tasks that they didn’t have to just a week prior, juggling multiple deadlines, too many meetings, and not enough information. It’s expected in these types of situations and for the most part we accept it because we’re thankful to still be working.

Tuesday of last week was particularly hectic as I had several meetings back-to-back, and several on top of one another. It was inevitable that I wouldn’t be able to make it to all of them so I missed one in particular – a conference call with our architectural team in Dallas. One of the other engineers had to miss it as well so we sent one of our young electrical engineers in our place to take notes. It’s understandable that the architectural staff in Dallas was a little peeved that we didn’t attend the meeting, but you’d think they’d understand given the circumstances. So needless to say, I was a little surprised to see the following e-mail from the senior architect when I returned to my desk:

Gary and John,

Thanks for your valuable input in the conference call today. 

I’m sure you’ll both agree that it was very beneficial to coordinate issues between yourselves and our structural  engineer.  This meeting was helpful in getting us all off on the right foot.

Oh, that’s right you both blew off the meeting.  Well, it’s a good thing that no deliverables are upcoming.

Oh, wait, there’s an Owner Review package due next week.

Regarding the Owner Review.  We will need your drawings by Friday afternoon so that we can send them to the printer here on Monday.  The meeting with the owner early the morning of the 20^th.

The files will need to be uploaded as pdf’s so that you will be able to verify that the information is showing up correctly on your sheets.  We don’t want to have to QC your work on this package.  We will have a full QC at the next (75%) submittal.

BTW, are you both planning on having your administrative assistant sign and seal the drawings too?

I can assure you I didn’t make a word of that up; that’s a real e-mail from a real senior architect. At first I thought I misread something, so I read it again. After each line I kept waiting for the sentence, “Ha! Just kidding guys. Next time make it to the meeting if you can,” but it never came. So I read it again. At that point I felt nothing but rage coursing through my veins, “Who in the fuck does this sawed-off sonofabitch think he is???” To make matters worse, that ass-turd had the cojones to copy the entire project team as well as the head of engineering for the whole company on the e-mail. I was so unbelievably livid, my blood was boiling, my face flushed red, and my hand was gripping the mouse so tightly I distinctly heard it scream in pain.

Now let me break down his e-mail for you: First of all, he comes out with the most blatantly, actively aggressive, childish sarcasm imaginable. I’d expect that from a 14-year-old whose friends stood him up at the theater for the late showing of Hot Tub Time Machine – “that was a hilarious scene when they transported back to 1988 and Rob Cordrouy suggested they invent Girls Gone Wild… Oh wait, you boners weren’t there because you stood me up to go see Date Night with a bunch whore cheerleaders. I hope it sucked, assholes!” - not a 50-something-year-old senior architect. Secondly, he passive aggressively insults our ability to review our own engineering drawings. Just to be clear, the owner review meeting he references is a 35% review. 35%, I tell you! That’s not even a real percentage! I could take a shit on a piece of paper, slap a t-square on it and give you 35% engineering drawings. Thirdly, he refers to the girl who attended the meeting in our place as an administrative assistant! She’s a goddamn graduate electrical engineer! Lastly, and bestly of all, he copies the head of engineering on the e-mail. It just so happened that the meeting I was attending instead of this stupid fucking 35% meeting was a meeting with the goddamn head of engineering! I’m not making that shit up.

Now, after receiving an e-mail like that you pretty much have three options: 1). Be the bigger man, take the high road, and let it pass – you won’t get any satisfaction out of it except when you return home to your wife and she assures you you’ve done the right thing, but at least you live to fight another day; 2). Be the smaller man and bitch-slap that guy right back with scathing e-mail of your own – the gratification will be immediate but so will your likely termination; 3). Appear to be the bigger man who takes the high road while in fact chopping that fucker’s legs right out from under him with the most subtle, passive-aggressive response possible – the gratification will be immediate and with any luck, it’ll grow exponentially with time.

You can imagine which option I took.

When that douche-lick pushed the send button on his e-mail he had no idea how big of a mistake he was making. By coming at me with a scathing, sarcastic e-mail like that he was walking squarely into the lion’s den of passive aggressive sarcasm. I’m like a ninja assassin of passive aggression; I’m like a roadside IED of passive aggression on the route from Baghdad to Fallujah; I’m like the silent but deadly fart of passive aggression that you can taste in the back of your throat before you’ve had a chance to plug your nostrils.  

So I took my time to make sure I got it right, and sent that shitface architect the following response, copying everyone on the e-mail:

Greg,

Let me apologize for Gary’s and my absence from the meeting this afternoon; there was a conflict with another project meeting and with recent staff reductions we’ve all been asked to pull double duty on several projects, as I’m sure you’re familiar. No excuses though, I should have contacted you before the meeting to let you know our status.

Kim Stewart who sat in on the meeting in our place is working with Gary on the electrical design/drawings and I’ve already got a download from her on the information that was covered in the meeting in addition to the conversation you and I had on the phone. I’ll also be contacting the structural engineer directly to discuss unit locations with him and will report any relevant information back to you.

Your sarcasm is noted and taken in stride and I can assure you we will have 35% engineering documents PDF’d and ready to go Friday afternoon.

Regards,

John

BOOM! Did you see that? Did you see what I did there? First of all I apologized right off the bat, immediately disarming his earlier e-mail and establishing myself as the bigger man. Then I snuck in an apparently innocuous excuse that was in fact an atom bomb of passive aggression – I told him we couldn’t make it to the meeting because of all the recent layoffs! No I didn’t! Oh, yes I did! I actually blamed our absence on all the recent firings! How bad does that asshole feel now that he chastised us while we’re still reeling from the layoff of a bunch of our coworkers? That would be deplorably insensitive of me if it weren’t in fact entirely true! Plus, I added in the subtlest uppercut to his nuts by personalizing it to him by saying he should be familiar with that type of situation. You know what? He is familiar with it! They’ve had shit-tons of layoffs in the Dallas office! BOOM! Thank you shitty economy for allowing me to make this guy feel like a complete dick! Then I backed off by again accepting fault for the situation, further dismantling any sort of hostility he could hope to harbor. After that I really pissed some gasoline on the flames by letting him know that the young female he incorrectly assumed was an administrative assistant because she was young and female was in fact an electrical designer. BOOM and BOOM! Oh man, can this get any better? Yes, yes it can because then I dealt the knockout blow to his soul by acknowledging his sarcasm, absorbing it like it’s not even there, and without even saying it suggesting that I can deliver a set of 35% engineering in a mere three days without even flinching. BOOM! Oh, I was so happy with myself.

After I sent that e-mail I was positively grinning from ear to ear. It would have been enough had it ended there, but luckily for me, and oh so unluckily for that poor, poor shit-stain of an architect in Dallas, it didn’t end there at all…