The post wherin we discuss the thought processes behind email delivery...

This snippet of email consumed me on my drive to work this morning:

“My kids school is closed today, (Snow Day)...
I will be in as soon as we can coordinate some place for them to hang out today.”

You see, every email that comes in my inbox is instantly evaluated against the following major criteria.

1. Is this issue an emergency that needs to be dealt with immediately?
2. Does this need follow up?
3. Is there an opportunity for a hilarious response?

It would seem, at the outset, that this email falls under “Criteria 3.” There are some problems with this, though:

1. This involves a co-workers child. A response would need to be tempered with an even greater deal of respect than usual while still providing that all-important “chuckle factor.”
2. The person who sent this email is, at least currently, outside the traditional “ring”” of witty email spam responses that tend to go around.

So, where do we take this? The obvious, if not lame answer, would be the following:

“Bring ‘em into work and let’s get them setup with a computer!”

Haha! Jovial back-slapping goodness. This joke would have been hilarious if I worked at IBM circa 1957. I do not.

The next route I explored was “social commentary”, something to the effect of the following:

“Plop them in front of the television, the parents of the 21st century”

This doesn’t really satisfy the criteria of “funny”, though. We are trying to use email for its true purpose, hilarity, not to make a statement.

There’s the tried-and-true “abandonment angle” response, which would look something like this:

http://www.f-r-c.org/index.php

There are just far too many potential pitfalls with this approach. Did this person have a painful adoption that would send them into a quiet catatonic state? Not a risk that I’m willing to take right now.

So, upon arriving at work, I settled on the following response:

“Thanks for the heads up.”

Brilliant!