‘Blob’? Can you escape the email
This issue Ken Rigsby is turned to jelly by…
As I get older it seems that everyone is getting younger. Policemen (and women), obviously. There are doctors, who in an alternative life could be my children. And postmen (and women) who are so fresh-faced they look like they’re on their way to school in the morning. On that last point I should be clear that I have nothing whatsoever against very young postmen (or women). However, the Royal Mail’s staff turnover seems so high nowadays that few posties stick around long enough to progress past their teens.
That’s a shame, because there are quite a few benefits to having an experienced postman who knows his job. Ours is called Tony and – no doubt with one eye on the Christmas tip that Mrs Rigsby still dishes out to both him and the binmen (and, er, binwomen... not that we have one of those) – he goes out of his way to be helpful.
For example, if a package is too big for the letterbox Tony will leave it in the gas-meter cupboard halfway up our side return extension. He also applies some basic mail sorting, demoting obvious junk mail to the bottom of the daily pile that, incidentally, he loops together with a little red elastic band. I really appreciate this. It’s a human touch that makes my life just a little bit easier. Admittedly, Tony sometimes makes mistakes, perhaps by putting a pizza mailshot among all the fan mail but, as we’re talking about a mere handful of letters each week, it’s no big deal. Elastic band off, a quick shuffle through the pile and I know what’s what. I wish I could say the ssame about the behaviou behaviour of some of my email inboxes. If you haven’ haven’t encountered the momodern trend for inbox automation you will do soon enough, becaus because these ‘smart’ filtering tools now abound. Gmail was my first experience of the phenomen phenomenon, a couple of years ago. I logged in to find that the contents of my neat, tidy and solitary inbox had – without warning – been sliced into a bunch of different catego categories. Suddenly, the simple, chronological inbox that I love was a distraction of headings, like Primary, Social and Promotions.
Presumably, Google’s intention was to make stuff easier for me to to find. In reality, I was lost without a paddle. Was that notification email about an online chat filed under Social or Updates? Hmm. Perhaps it was in Forums? Ah, no, it was in Primary after all, because Gmail’s filters had made a Tony-style sorting error.
As I said, Tony’s mistakes are easily spotted. But I receive hundreds of emails each week so I was clueless when Gmail’s electronic postie got things wrong. Messages I needed disappeared into the wrong folders, while others of no interest were flagged as Primary. I fixed the problem by disabling the feature (click the Settings cog, then ‘Configure inbox’, remove all the ticks, then click Save).
Many email services have similar features but they’ve been blissfully absent from my Windows Desktop. That is, until a recent Windows 10 update added Focused and Other tabs to the Mail app. Suddenly, my cherished single inbox had lost its singular focus. I’ve deflected Gmail’s email-gobbling monster, and a couple of other webmail variants besides, but now Microsoft seems intent on devouring my desktop inbox. I choked off this feeding frenzy by clicking Mail’s settings cog, followed by Reading, and then switched Focused Inbox to Off.
To me, these email services are acting like that wobbly creature from the 1950s B-movie The Blob - they are soulless, ruthless and unstoppable. Right now, my Windows 10 Mail inbox is back under my control but I fear that dining out on my desktop inbox was just the beginning for The Blob. I’ve no doubt that the insatiable jelly will be back to feast on more of my messages soon enough.
These email services are like that wobbly creature from Theblob – soulless, ruthless and unstoppable