Letters to the Editor
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I've had success with this approach:
I reply to such emails with this:
"LOL! That one was great! Those things crack me up -- I always check out http://www.snopes.com/info/whatsnew.asp for the latest ones.
Still chuckling,
Elizabeth"
By appearing to compliment the forwarder's sense of humor you avoid sounding critically superior, and give them plausible deniability about being a credulous idiot. There is a risk that they will keep forwarding messages to you because they think you enjoy them as jokes, in which case I use this:
"Hey, could you take me off your forwarding list? I'm unsubscribing from all my mailing lists so I can really concentrate on [whatever project you are working on]."
You could always go straight to the second message, but that does nothing to enlighten to forwarder.
Cheers,
Elizabeth
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Damn "Salon" liberals
Will you never shut up about the Bush administration! This whole letter and response are obviously just excuses to spew more of your Bush-hating bile. All this talk about a credulous boss out of touch with reality, believing any story that comes his way that confirms his world-view and the disastrous consequences thereto...you've obviously made this up just to talk bad on Bush and Mr Cheney.
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Why is it that only the bad survive?
Not only do they survive, they manage to manipulate peoples minds and motives in a way that adds a question mark to their character. I cannot imangine why reacting to some bizarre asertation that some is at risk, but by sending 15 letters some miracle will occur. That is a blatant waste of time, superstition, and psychic readers are also another bunch, that definitely do more harm than good. If people choose to believe a certain belief, that is there belief, but to impose that a certain thing will happen, because of another weird event, is not cool. It spreads anxiety, fear, and is one of the reasons we begin to lose our perspective, rather than let natural occurences occur. There is very little that can be done in the term natural occurences, and we need to help people have confidence, not a sense of doom, or foreboding.
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Or, one could communicate
The LW could simply go to his/her boss and say "I'm finding my inbox hard to manage and I feel it's taking my time away from my work. Do you think we could set a team policy about forwarding non-work-related email?"
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Press the M key for MURDER
I think you know what time it is. It is time to set up a meeting in Outlook. The outlook for you: delicious... the outlook for your boss: MURDER.
It is time to MURDER your boss. He/she/it will be well versed in what may happen to a lonely individual on a rain soaked highway, or what the individual in the broken down car in the neighborhood could do to them.... Boss has read these. It is time to teach the Boss who's really boss with an icepick to the back of the head... blood sprayed across the projector leaving a burundy stain splashed on the wall in redirected light. That will be one scary chain mail your boss never gets to write and forward to 15 people they he or she knows!
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Open Up A Hotmail
Then tell her to send those silly ass emails to your hotmail! Don't say silly-ass though! Say, HI I JUST WANTED TO DROP U A LINE FROM MY "PERSONAL" EMAIL ADDRESS WILL U SEND UR FACTS HERE ALL MY CONTACTS R HERE IN THIS BOX I WILL FORWARD THEM MORE EASILY FROM THERE
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Racism by chain mail
(Sigh) I am plagued with such e-mails, not at work, but from my non-senile scratch golfer 78 y.o. father. I've respectfully directed him to Snopes, and thankfully at least he's now using it to check so he won't look like a fool. But if Snopes is neutral on the subject or verifies the message's veracity, look out! Dad's sending it out with a vengence. His favorite is the "news" that the traitorous US Postal service has decided to sell stamps that honor muslim holidays - obviously another direct attack on Christianity in the U.S. It's old news - the stamps were issued pre-9/11 and were part of a series that honored a variety of religious holidays. And it can't be anti-Christian, since the USPS has always issued a variety of Christian stamps.
Ugh. When I explained the truth, and that even President Bush has urged the American people to resist the urge toward wholesale villification of muslims, his response was "well, how can you tell which ones are dangerous and which ones are not - someone I know did business with them and said they are all thieves and liars, so don't be gullible, daughter."
Ugh ugh ugh. This is a man who is intelligent enough, is a devout Christian (obvious from all the defense-of-Christianity chain mail he also sends me), but he grew up in the deep south and believes to this day that he isn't a racist but is instead a wiser head than all we gullible liberals. I love him, but he drives me CRAZY. At least he's not my boss and in a position to screw my career. It's not always easy to bite my tongue, but I know I'm not likely to change or enlighten him at this late stage of his life.
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I get chain letters too
LW,
Just ignore these emails and hit the delete button. That's what I do when I receive links and chain letters. If I find one of them to be interesting I read it (maybe even pass it along to a couple of friends), then get rid of it.
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OR
You could just hit the delete key. Geez.
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On becoming a legend yourself
I became the go-to person for hoaxes in my office. When someone sent me one of these emails I diplomatically directed them to snopes or a similar hoax site and suggested, gently, that they check these sites first before forwarding. Some people were offended but others were grateful and often would ask me for details again about how to check.
If I had a boss who sent these I would do the same thing. Clearly such a boss doesn't have a lot upstairs so I don't think you'd be losing any respect if you write diplomatically.