Chicago Business

I am resigned to the fact that my email inbox will always be full.

Whether it's the Energy Group, my Microeconomics TA, old friends, family, Facebook, live nude girls or those damn Google Groups, I receive more emails per hour than I have hours to read them. I did the math: in the time it would take me to read all of my unopened mail, starting right now, at the rate of one email per minute, assuming I continue to receive an average of 100 emails per day, I could walk around the earth 50 times, cure cancer, turn 72 years old, or figure out how to fold a fitted sheet. That's a lot of email.

And I know I'm not the only one. I know I'm not the only one, because at least 592 other people are copied on at least half of the mail I receive. So on the heels of LEAD and in the interest of developing self awareness, rather than whine and complain, I thought it would be more productive to simply make people aware of what they're putting out there: as they say once you know you can grow. So in order of most pesky to least, what follows is a run down of exactly what's clogging my inbox and what, if anything, we can do about it.

Emails about emails. These emails usually begin something like this: "You will shortly be receiving an email…" Emails about emails are a lot like meetings about meetings: a waste of my time. A slightly more annoying subset of the emails about emails are angry emails about emails. Someone may have inadvertently replied all, but there is no need to reply all to let said offender know that he inadvertently replied all. Two wrongs a right do not make. Which leads us to…

The accidental reply all. You'd think that since most of us have had about ten years or so to get comfortable with email that this would happen less often than it does. Alas, some people never learn. Other people work for the State Department where as the result of a particularly torrential "email storm" earlier this year any egregious misuse of reply all is subject to "immediate disciplinary action." Fortunately for the American tax payers this means that President Obama probably spends less time than we do fuming about erroneous emails. Unfortunately, this has nothing to do with the fact that someone in your Stats class has an orthodontist appointment during Monday's class and everyone knows it.

The utterly inappropriate reply all. A close cousin of the accidental reply all is of course the utterly inappropriate reply all. This is usually a rant against a professor/co-worker/client typically involving healthy doses of profanity and/or sarcasm that, through the untimely click of a button, falls into precisely the wrong hands. I worked for a firm that did not as a practice offer 360 feedback, however we were all well aware that one particular manager (who was prone to late night email mishaps) thought all of the analysts were overpaid and under-worked or had nice breasts (or both).

Emails you wish you had read two weeks ago. These are emails that you couldn't be bothered to read at the time but that contain time sensitive information you wish you had acted on. Don't tell me you don't deeply regret missing out on free Chicago Booth thermometers in the Peter May Student Lounge last week.

Emails with important information that you can never, ever delete. These emails usually contain a string of numbers (76374-3849392-5844783), letters (UyHmoz), or more typically, strings of numbers letters and assorted symbols (Cy6%s9y$). These are usually important passwords, identification numbers or PINs, and while technically I could store them elsewhere, it's much easier to search through my email inbox than through the scary drawer in my kitchen for a scrap of paper that the weevils may or may not have already gotten to.

Emails about parties in cities where you no longer live. Although I'm never quite sure where the Chicago Booth party du jour is, I can tell you exactly where the ten dollar open bars are this weekend in Philadelphia, New York and Boston.

Ten page emails with the most interesting information contained in the last paragraph. This means you Career Services.

I could go on, but the time its taken you to read this far may well have been better spent spamming the entire first year class because you lost your lucky pencil in Kovler Café.

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