🚀 go-pugleaf

As someone who has used "the nets" for over a decade I agree that
there's something seriously amiss in these analyses. Nick Szabo's
points about the power of the written word and the apparent longing
for non-threatening interaction (even where that interaction becomes
less valuable) are well taken.

People see this behavior, tack the word "rude" on it, remember that
"rude" is a no-no, and proceed to propose cures...whoa! Let's step
back to definitions and descriptions.

A lot of what people label "rude" is in the eye of the beholder.

I remember once one of my employees received a complaint about some
software he had installed, from another system admin (not my employee,
but not exactly a "civilian" either.) The complaint was rather
accusatory in tone, I guess some change in the mail system had caused
problems on his system. I knew my employee and predictably he
apologized and said he'd back out those changes (which, in fact, were
quite important to a lot of users.)

I pointed out, rather careful to be courteous, that this other guy's
mailer problems were due to long-standing problems with the system he
managed, which we had pointed out before. And which we even had
offered to help him fix. But that this had become a real problem, as
either way some large group of people were going to suffer. Could the
fixes to his system possibly be moved up in priority, a lot?

I had posted that reply in the evening. I came in the next day and his
boss's boss's boss, who was my boss, asked me to stop by his office.

What unraveled was a morning apparently a morning filled with angry
tears from this guy about how I had abused him with this e-mail. I was
wrong, that was that, and I had better figure out a way to smooth
things out.

What?

I had the message (I quickly found out none of these management
geniuses had asked to see the message in question.) We pulled it up on
the screen.

"Hmm, I guess you're about to tell me that he had no reason to react
like that to this message, right?"

"Right, it looks fairly innocuous to me, there it is, you read it,
what do you think? I haven't lost my mind have I?"

"I agree, it looks pretty tame, but he...there must be some reason,
some context we don't have here?"

"Here were the other messages..."

"Uh, hmmm, looks like pretty typical crap, what sparked this...?"

"I dunno, I'll speak to him, but gee..."

So I spoke to him, he was *really* shaken. I bet to this day he talks
about this horrible experience. It was wierd.

I've seen this kind of thing elsewhere, not usually that dramatic, but
someone seeing something, some emotional intensity, some accusation or
threat, in a fairly innocuous e-mail message, that just wasn't there.

That, to me, is far more interesting. And might well be the problem.
-- 
        -Barry Shein

Software Tool & Die    | {xylogics,uunet}!world!bzs | bzs@world.std.com
Purveyors to the Trade | Voice: 617-739-0202        | Login: 617-739-WRLD