In which Steffan is asked to Twitter-ize it, and feels like a dinosaur.

I posted this up in response to something chiller noted, namely, that it seems that people are sending one-topic emails of one-line or less at work. She asked if anyone else had noticed this as well. Of course I have:

At work I often have to troubleshoot issues and explain what occurred when end-users screw up the data, and then further complicate things by screwing up the data change requests.

I used to give thorough comprehensive explanations, starting with the background, then go into how this occurred, what was done to correct, how we can prevent for the future, etc. Nothing extra, just the issue and the possible actions, so that the Project Manager can recommend a path to the client. These emails are rarely more than 1000 words. Usually much less.

My boss recently brought me in to say that he was concerned about the time it took to write these, and asked me to "twitter"-ize my emails.

"Just one or two sentences, Steffan. If people want to know the background, they'll contact you. No one has time to read all those paragraphs anymore, especially when you are looking at it on a blackberry along with everything else you get in a day. Just tell them what they need to DO."

The fact that these people will be acting on a situation while essentially ignorant of the facts behind it, doesn't seem to be a problem.

All of the other responses to chiller's question were one line only. "Yep, been seeing it since 1996." etc. No long anecdote to relate, just "I-firmative, trend noted and catalogued."

I am a dinosaur.