Last week my esteemed colleague below me on the back page discussed e-mail etiquette and his intense irritation with people who pre-thank — that is, who thank you in their initial message before they know how you’ll respond to whatever their message is about and then when and however you reply they, in turn, reply thanking you again.
Now by a curious coincidence I also was thinking about manners this week. What constitutes the behaviors we refer to as manners has changed remarkably over human history and what one period in history considered acceptable another considered to be gross and vile. In the beginning (about 1.8 million years ago) there were no manners at all and for several millennia the height of good manners was apparently pretty much concerned with not killing each other.
Manners had improved considerably by the mid-1500s. The Dutch humanist, Erasmus was provoked by who knows what to advise “…it is impolite to greet someone who is urinating or defecating. A well-bred person should always avoid exposing without necessity the parts to which nature has attached modesty. If necessity compels this, it should be done with decency and reserve, even if no witness is present.”
Civility took a few more faltering steps forward and in 1744 George Washington advised schoolboys to “Kill no Vermin as Fleas, lice ticks in the Sight of Others, if you See any filth or thick Spittle put your foot Dexteriously upon it if it be upon the Cloths of your Companions, Put it off privately, and if it be upon your own Cloths return Thanks to him who puts it off.”
And on to today where we have had Emily Post (“proper etiquette”), Miss Manners (“heavy etiquette theory”), and Martha Stewart (promoter of “good things” except where it concerns the etiquette of stock trading … I still don’t think she deserved prison) to tell us how to behave well. All of this working at manners has furthered our culture tremendously but, alas, is only partially applicable to the online world.
The situation described by Paul is a great example of this disconnect, and what the recipient is doing would be totally acceptable if there were days or even hours between messages. When there are seconds then it all seems too much and folks like Paul are driven to homicidal thoughts in response.
The problem is — to recycle a phrase I haven’t used for a while — “Internet time;” that perception that everything, not just technology, has to happen as fast as it can happen because it can and should. More is no longer better. More and faster is better (or perhaps that should be “Moore and faster”).
And this is where the Paul’s problem lies. Paul wrote “before I can return my attention to whatever task it had been ripped from to reply, I’ll see the … next message hit my inbox.” He’s right, we’re all getting like that, compulsive e-mail readers. Hang on … there! I just did exactly that while writing this column!
Anyway, I think there’s a simple answer that you can do with just a little effort: Exit your e-mail client and only fire it up once per hour on the hour. You’ll deal with your messages and then quit until the next scheduled mail scan. It can be done. An editor I used to know did just that. Of course, he’s dead now.
