Today in Stupid Emails

An unfortunate consequence of my job is that I'm often tasked with writing business requirements for hapless business users whose pretty little world isn't pretty enough.  Basically, someone at a client will have a need for something new or an upgrade to whatever shitty system they rely on.  I'll need to sit down with this someone and write up what they need in excruciating detail.  After this is done, I think have to get this someone to approve my write up so it can go to a different set of people who will examine the document and make a decision as to how feasible the changes are.  Point is, there is a lot of run around and wasted time and face to face meetings with the particular cretins usually found in backrooms of financial institutions.  On the bright side, the particular brand of stupidity and irrationally that surrounds me is captured via email.  So welcome to a new feature presented to you by the demented individuals at my client: stupid emails of the day.

In today’s installment, we’ll review a particular incident involving my pseudo-boss at the firm.  I wrote up a document and got it reviewed a week ago and then forwarded the approval from the business user as a way to close out the assignment.  So imagine my surprise when I see the following message in my inbox:

What the hell is this person talking about?  I responded in kind alerting Pseudo Boss that I had in fact sent the approval of this particular document a week ago.  Now, a normal coherent individual with limited head trauma would confer from this response that a meeting had been had with the user which led to an approval of the document.  But alas, humanity stupid knows no bounds which leads to a reply:

*Holds head in hands* What am I supposed to do with this?  I replied nicely even though its quite clear that Pseudo Boss is convinced I don't know the meaning of “ETA” even though they are very clearly using it incorrectly.  I replied nicely because that's what I'm supposed to do.  I reiterated by stance on the matter and prayed to baby Jesus that it would end there.  Had I any stones or not liked receiving a bi-weekly check, I might have replied as follows:

"Dear Future Darwinism Victim,

I feel it is time to address the various issues which protrude from your email like a foul porcupine.  You see, in my occupation we are drilled never to assume things.  We are told to find truth by asking questions and make sure we have the facts and only the facts.  As a caveat however, we are also trusted to use our reading comprehension and logic to arrive at certain answers.  From your emails, I can only conclude, using my reading comprehension and logic, that you are missing both skills as well as a chromosome somewhere.  So please let me restate – I sent you the approval last week AFTER the review – because you see, that’s how these things usually work.  Humanity, in all it’s wonders, has this wonder thing where things happen in sequence sometimes like say a rainbow after a rainfall (you liked that didn’t you, you little shitface?).

Further, I feel the need to comment on your erroneous usage of the term “ETA.”  As you know, it means “estimated time of arrival.”  However, as you may not know, it is only really applicable to things which are real, meaning things which have mass.  Now I don’t mean to over saturate your wee chromosome missing brain with too many big concepts suffice it to say that “reviews” don’t have mass because they are ideas and not physical things.  So you see when you ask me for an “ETA” on a review, my only recourse of action is to wonder whether you ate paint chips as a kid (I assume you did).  As a rule of thumb, next time just ask when the due date is for something.

Worst Regards,

Me"