Email is From the Devil

I'm pretty sure email was invited by the devil. If you Google it, I'm sure you'll find names of humans, universities, and technical jargon,  but nope. I'm sure it's from the devil. 

My first experience with email in a workplace environment was when I worked for Apple retail from 2008 to 2013. We were supposed to check it every day. But usually, you could get by without checking it for a few days. Then Steve Jobs would send out long emails about a new device, the stock price, or a policy change. I wouldn't know what was going on until a co-worker would say, "Hey didn't you see that email from last week?" and I would have to say, "What email?" 

When I moved to corporate information technology, I began to live out of email. But at least I was at the bottom of the totem pole there. I worked at the service desk, and all the emails I was concerned about came through our support mailbox and into our ticketing system. So personal emails became secondary. Even THEN, I only had to check my email once a day. Maybe.

I bounced around a few more jobs with the same email method for a few years afterward. Monday morning, check your email. Monday afternoon, check it one final time. So now that's twice a day. Soon, however, I'd become a manager, bringing in the real pain. 

I had always heard that people hated email. Besides the occasional problem, I never saw the big deal. Yes, it was annoying, but I didn't want to kill my computer. I knew that my Gmail box was full of trash and spam, but nothing ever came of it. I would look into it while waiting for an authorization form or password reset message. I had a few filters or two and knew where spam was located. 

In June 2020, however, I was promoted to Customer Support Manager. This was a whole never level of email I was unprepared for. Now everyone wanted to email me all the time! The CEO, CFO, my director, and HR members, during hiring, all wanted JUST to email me. It's like they didn't understand what Slack even was. And don't even get me started about meeting requests! Last-second emails with time blocked off my calendar, which I had to keep up with. And heaven forbid a customer get a hold of my work inbox address. UGH! "Hey, can you fix this for me, my special pal, special friend, personal training coach? You can fix this right...RIGHT?" 

So now I live with three windows open at all times. My ticket queue, Slack...and my inbox. My lesson is that I need to stay on top of all three all the time, no matter what happens. If I miss anything, that's my fault now. Slack said they would replace email, but that didn't happen. It may have made it worse. 

So that is why email is from the devil. It's too much, too soon, and too often.