
Have a colleague who sends too many emails? Let him know, anonymously - gonsanchezs
http://minimize.email/
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imbusy111
Awesome tool for exercising your passive aggression! We have built too much
trust among our team members and it was decreasing our competitiveness and
backstabbing. I am sure this tool will return us back to the norm in no time!

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strictnein
The email, for the curious:

\----------

Hi there,

Someone anonymously wanted to let you know that you send WAY too many emails ️

And you know... that's not great...

Being that guy (or gal) is rarely a good thing, so here are 3 things you can
do:

    
    
       1. Tag someone else you work with who sends too many emails to pass the blame and ease 
       your conscience at minimize.email.
    
       2. Consider Twist or Basecamp for deeper, calmer, and more meaningful work.
       
       3. If you absolutely must write an email, write a process-centric one.
    

Be well and don't forget to tag a colleague!

You received this email because someone nominated you on Minimize Email.

\----------

~~~
jaclaz
Interesting theory, in order to reduce the amount of e-mails you let the
culprit know via e-mail, additionally suggesting him/her to use the service to
nominate more people (thus sending each another e-mail).

There is something perverse about it that I like.

~~~
a3_nm
Don't forget the two other pieces of advice: using centralized services like
Twist or Basecamp, which I suspect want you to use their own specific crappy
user interface, or writing a "process-centric" email, whatever that may be.

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tyingq
I don't get it. This subject is not so uncomfortable to discuss if you have
some tact.

I'm not sure anonymous email is a solution for subjects that are hard to
discuss either.

I once had to have a body odor discussion with an employee. I don't think an
email would have been helpful there either.

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dmurray
Everyone tried this out on themselves first, right? So at worst this could be
a good way to harvest emails of HN readers.

Disclosure: actually I didn't try it

~~~
carreau
Just try on something like [http://www.yopmail.com/](http://www.yopmail.com/)
or [https://www.mailinator.com/](https://www.mailinator.com/)

~~~
dmurray
I was going to but I figured I'd check back in this thread. Someone already
posted the email.

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nkrisc
What a great way to demoralize your colleagues instead of simply talking to
them.

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dsr_
I have been using email since 1987 and have never seen anyone who sends too
much legitimate email. (Spammers don't count. People who like to Reply All to
All-Company lists don't count.)

Where is this a problem?

~~~
novia
Oh geez, oh wow, I'm glad you have never run into this problem.

One of my coworkers decided to work from home today, and they decided it would
be best to send updates by email addressing whether or not they were
physically at their computer at a given time. Out of the 10 emails I have
received from them today, only one of them has addressed something actionable.

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webwanderings
What if your manager does not see eye to eye with you, and happen to like
others in the team sending too many emails? Ouch!

Sometimes too many emails gets the job done. It is a matter of perspective,
subjectivity, and diversity of opinions. One can't force everyone to follow a
unified platform of Basecamp, Slack, etc.

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Mz
Wow, so, what if you are the only person they are inundating with email? What
if you are the only one and do not even know it?

Anonymity is not as sure a thing as many people seem to think especially for
complaining about something so specific. You are presumably already
identifying yourself as a coworker at the place of employment or whatever.

I mean, if you don't have the social skills to let someone know nicely and
effectively that communication needs to be handled more efficiently somehow,
then you probably aren't as clever as you think when you hit "send" on
something like this either.

I remember an anonymous survey at BigCo where answers were so specific, they
had trouble trying to share it with the bosses it was intended to go to
because even without names, the details would make it clear who was
complaining about you.

~~~
detaro
Good point in general, but in many scenarios you can easily know that you are
_not_ the only person, e.g. if someone loves CC-ing way to many people or
sends tons of stuff to lists. Still kind of weird way of doing it...

~~~
Mz
There may be ways to know for sure that you aren't the only one, but there is
quite a lot of one-sided information in the world and the internet tends to be
bad about this. Many people seem unaware of the possibility that maybe
something was lost in cyberspace, so if you don't get a reply or read receipt
of some kind, it is not unreasonable to send a follow up email and inquire.

I tend to send replies to make sure people know that I got their thing, but I
have had to reign that in over time because it goes weird places socially. We
really have not done a good job in the online world of finding a way to
confirm that two-way communication has happened. In person, you generally are
going to have a good idea if they heard you or not. Online, it can be pretty
difficult to determine.

And then two different people doing the exact same thing can get interpreted
vastly differently.

That doesn't make excessive emails less aggravating, but online communication
is far harder to do well than many people seem to realize. This anonymous
chewing out is not a good faith means to resolve anything.

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kazinator
A form on the open Internet that sends to arbitrary e-mails is a bad idea. The
only thing that would make this worse would be a field for specifying the
body.

If you know any spam honeypot ("spamtrap") addresses, please feed them to this
thing.

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aluhut
I'm pretty sure this mail would end up in the spam filter of my company.

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timlod
Would be nice to know what this does without trying it with your own email
address. I didn't see anything to click on other than submit, or is there?

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ipsin
You just need to find the "everyone@yourcompany.com" list and use that for an
exciting "Please take me off your list" mega-thread.

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nicholassmith
Does it also send it in Comic Sans for true office passive aggression effect?
Just go talk to them face to face.

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crimsonalucard
I should send this to everyone at my company to minimize emails in general.

