Email is forever
Judith Kallos can’t believe it.
Even though she is well into her third decade as an email etiquette expert at netmanners.com, she is incredulous that the bonehead e-moves by people who should know better just keep coming.
The latest is the release of embarrassing emails at the Democratic National Committee, possibly exposed by Russian hackers and released by WikiLeaks.
“This is crazy,” Kallos says in disbelief. “Email never goes away, ever, ever, ever. The rule of thumb is, if you wouldn’t say it to your mother, don’t put it in an email.”
The hacked emails include internal discussions that seem to reveal a bias toward the Hillary Clinton campaign and against her former rival, Sen. Bernie Sanders.
One that has caused a stir reads, in part, “Does he (Sanders) believe in a God. He had skated on saying he has a Jewish heritage. I think I read he is an atheist. This could make several points difference with my peeps. My Southern Baptist peeps would draw a big difference between a Jew and an atheist.”
Kallos speculates that the DNC emailers may have felt empowered and a little arrogant — or maybe uninformed. “A professional does not communicate in that fashion ever,” she says.
Kallos has been advising businesses on proper email usage since the medium was new. “I’m apolitical when it comes to email etiquette,” she says.
Even so, it’s hard to persuade people that just because the messages are in the ether it doesn’t make them invisible.
“Emails are archived like crazy,” she says. “They are on servers you have never heard of.”
Daniel Post Senning often gives talks on business etiquette, and he’s never at a loss for examples of major email fails.
“It’s a good news/bad news situation for me, because there’s always a more recent example,” he says. “It’s really a matter of taking the newspaper and flipping it back three days.”
Senning works at the Emily Post Institute in Vermont and is the great-great grandson of the eponymous etiquette expert. He also hosts, with his cousin Lizzie Post, the podcast “Awesome Etiquette.” “Your work email is not private, and, often, it does not even belong to you,” he says. “But we’re all creatures of habit, and there are temptations we all fall prey to.” He invokes the “headline rule” — if you write something in an email, imagine it appearing in a headline. Senning also offers an important technological reminder: “You put yourself at the mercy of anyone with one level of technological knowledge more than you have.” Email only feels private. “But it’s potentially the most public and permanent thing you do that day” and should be treated as such, he says. The medium is relatively new, but discretion isn’t. On the Esquire politics blog on Sunday, Charles P. Pierce evoked an old-school Boston ward boss, Martin Lomasney, who figured out email etiquette 100 years before it existed. “Never write if you can speak,” Lomasney said. “Never speak if you can nod. Never nod if you can wink.”