Letters to the Editor
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hmm
Amity's letter makes sense.
maybe this is the boss's idea of appearing down to earth, or maybe the boss is not as cool as the underlings and does not share their sophisticated sense of humor. yes i do agree chain mails are unprofessional, but he/she's the boss. there must be a reason why.
does LW have an issue with boss's management style when it comes to the projects and teams themselves? does the boss discriminate, meddle, encourage, inspire, get the work done? does the LW think that the chain mail sending is an omen that more serious events could ensue - such as projects being lost due the boss's possible cluelessness? these things are more important (of course, only if the LW really cares for the job) to worry about, more than chain mails.
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Always Correct Them
Whenever I get these things, I don't care who they're from (my mom, co-workers, a guy I play tennis with), I ALWAYS respond, politely, to all recipients and correct any factual errors, usually with a link to SNOPES. I don't do this to embarrass the sender, but to stop the spread of misinformation. Maybe it's because I work in education, but I feel it is my duty to defend the truth. I usually only have to do this once or twice before they stop sending these messages to me.
I think if more people had my attitude and challenged, rather than deleted, tripe when they saw it, it wouldn't spread so easily.
As for kitten pics, I use the excuse that the file is too large and it's taking up too much of my inbox quota. I politely ask them to take me off their list for this reason. (I like cute kitty pics as much as the next guy, but I don't need them clogging up my inbox. I go to icanhascheezburger when I need my fix.)
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these emails are the same ones
fat chicks post on personal ads in substitution for an accurate photo. Nothing is more unappealing than a fat chick.
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Your boss wants you to work on these emails, so get to work!
When your boss asks you 'where's that project I gave you last week?" explain, "Not quite ready, I'm still working on that email you sent about the fluffy kitty. I've sent it to 50 people already but I know there are more people I could forward it to, so I'm researching their email addresses. I should be ready to start that other project in a day or two, OK?"
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Just...
Send them to me. I'm great at telling people off that send this shit to me.
Now I don't get it...
What's weird is that it's your boss, who you now know got there through some other means than their intelligence.
*sigh*
If it wasn't for the idiots in the world, we wouldn't have spam and chain emails...
There isn't a life guard at the gene pool, and there should be...
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Tolerance...
I've been thinking about this sort of phenomenon - angry overreactions to something that is really quite harmless - and I think that this is part of a greater problem. Many people have just never learned to tolerate others' quirks. Instead of shrugging, accepting that we all have habits that others think are weird, and going on with life, they work themselves up into a lather. This is not conducive to good mental health.
Instead of quitting your job (over what? fluffy kitties?), getting all angry at your boss (for what? fluffy kitties?), or just ruminating over this for days and days, accept that people are weird. People are quirky. A person can be a perfectly adequate employee or manager and still have a fluffy kitty fixation, a crazy compulsion to write letters to Cary Tennis, or any other quirk or weirdness. There's nothing wrong with being quirky. We're not robots. We all have lives and interests outside of work. Just relax and save your mental energy for something more important.
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Place this in context
Forwards versus yelling monster boss, backstabbing monster boss, evil lying gossipy monster boss, touchy sexual orientation ignoring gossipy sexual harrassing boss (do I get bonus points for referencing another letter), control freak workaholic boss,etc?
If this is the worst thing your bos does, you are REALLY lucky.
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The delete button's there for a reason
Or, you can just accept that even well-educated people can be surprisngly credulous and harbor loopy ideas.
Just delete the e-mails. What's so hard about that?
If your boss queries you about your response to the junk he/she is sending you, smile and say "Well, I'm thinking about that," and switch the conversation to work-related stuff.
Every work situation is going to present something like this, whether it's the boss sending out ridiculous e-mail forwards or the well-meaning person in the next cubicle that really, really wants to share his/her story of self-discovery, or why you need Jesus in your life, or whatever.
You have to learn how to sidestep gracefully, my friend. This is a good time to start.
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get real
I think the posters here who rant that this is highly unprofessional and would not be tolerated elsewhere are sorely naive about the real world.
Bosses are never perfect. They're humans just like us and have issues and weaknesses. And SO do their bosses, they ones who would theoretically fire them for being slightly imperfect. Get a little more experience under your belt and you'll see the wide spectrum of folks who work and don't get fired for being less than perfect.
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anonymous
my boss just emailed me an odd video from the Brit's got Talent show of a guy wiht a puppet...
it sure takes all kinds.
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re: "Terrible work environment"
anyone who thinks kitty emails alone make a terrible work environemnt is sadly naive about the workplace. I'm guessing you're in your first job, maybe protected by a Dad or uncle who owns the company? Oh, the stories most people here could tell you about REALLY terrible stuff. I mean TERRIBLE, not annoying or silly or indulgent or inefficient, but TERRIBLE. Sexual harassment, poory hidden affairs with the secretary, embezzling, etc.
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Fluffy kittens
I work at a large corporation and the non-technical people who are not managers send out hoax notices about suffering animals ALL THE TIME. They fall for every single one of them. Since I volunteer with animal welfare organizations, I feel it is my duty to investigate each one (it takes all of 2 minutes) and send out a rebuttal with a link to snopes or the results of my phone call to the institution involved. I regularly submit content to snopes as well.
At this point, I get email from people asking me to evaluate messages they receive before they send anything to the company. It helps that other employees have responded similarly to other hoax messages.
I do not know what kind of organization the letter writer works for. If it is a small office, just delete the mail, because the manager has a proportionately larger influence on the writer's continued employment. If it is a large corporation, it has a costly impact on productivity to send garbage out to the company. A snopes pointer, *NOT* CC-ed to the rest of the company would be more diplomatic. It would offer the manager an opportunity to correct the mistaken message.
I would certainly not quit my job over having a feather brained boss, especially if that feather brained boss is OK in other regards.