A Reminder about EMAIL Jokes

All too often we tend to view e-mails and text messages as informal means of communication. We joke with our friends using our work computers and say things that we would probably never say in a written letter.  Just a word of warning about that.  The content of e-mails and text messages can often look very, very bad when examined later on.

As an example, an employee of a business wrote the following about a difficult file:   “Burn the files, delete them […] and pretend we’ve never heard of them – I’m joking.”  When that relationship fell apart, that e-mail was uncovered.  As you can imagine, whatever the “joke” was supposed to be, it wasn’t all that funny anymore and I am sure the author of the e-mail regrets what he or she wrote.

Although perhaps an extreme example (destroying important files is not a joking matter under any circumstances), we should all keep in mind that although we think our e-mails and text messages will never come back to haunt us, things that made sense or were supposed to be funny in one context can seem malicious or at least embarrassing in another context.

When it comes to e-mails and texts, before hitting send, spare a brief moment to reflect on how that e-mail or text would look under other circumstances and ask yourself if you would be willing to sign your name to the same words in a formal letter.  If not, exercising some care before you hit “send” might be in order.