2/26/2010

In My Humble Opinion....

If there’s something I hate more than- well, things I generally hate, it would be abbreviations; especially the ones used in e-mails.
Don’t know why, but I feel the person who mails in abbreviations doesn’t care much for you. It feels as if he says “listen A$$#0!e, I have loads of important stuff, I don’t care what it is that you need to do. Just figure out this gibberish and get the freaking thing done.”
I may be wrong, but that’s how I feel.
My previous boss keeps sending the mails with lots of ASAPs, FYAs, and the whole bunch. I suspect he makes them up as he types the mail.
I couldn’t hold it one fine day. I barged into his room, and said, “Sir, I have asked you not to use abbreviations in the mails addressed to me... please don’t do it!”
He was a good boss, always ready to listen and provide a logical solution to the weirdest request.
“Buddy (that’s how he addressed all of us), you are in corporate jungle.. you need to learn the lingo. You work fine, but if you keep harping over trivial issues like these- it’ll be difficult.”
“No sir, I can do whatever you ask me to- except understanding this crap.”
“its simple, actually… you expand the words that sound relevant in the scenario.. see this mail from our Group leader. Tell me what does this mean..”
The mail had nothing but “FYI” and an attachment, a spreadsheet- roughly 8 MB in size. Well, if he has to read this dumbass spreadsheet- he’s truly fucked.
“Fuck You, Idiot?” I blurted out.
The bossman was silent for a while. “OK, I won’t send any abbreviations in our future communications”, he said.
As I was closing the door of his cabin, he said “it means For Your Information”.

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