Email or Face-to-Face

I once worked in a newspaper newsroom that was almost dead silent. The only audible sounds were keyboard tapping and the one-sided conversations of reporters into the mouthpieces of their phones. People sat shoulder to shoulder and never exchanged a word. I was young, 26 years old, and assumed that everyone kept interoffice communication to a minimum because of daily deadlines. This was before the days of widespread IM use, so I had no reason to suspect otherwise.

My assumption was upended when, a few days into the job, a colleague on the Arts and Culture desk sent me a message on the intercompany email exchange. Apparently, some colleagues had decided that I was the most fit at the Money desk. It was bizarre to say the least, not to mention unnerving. What else had they decided via email that they’d never have dared to discuss face-to-face on the office floor?

With the growth of IMing and email now such a dominant tool in intercompany communication, my take on the silent workspace is somewhat more jaded. Dead-quiet workspaces unsettle me. Why isn’t anyone talking, and if they are, why aren’t they willing to stand publicly behind their voice?

We freely LOL and !!! when we’d rarely be that loud in our cubicles. Our smiles look nothing like a perfect :), but online, we use those smiles so liberally they’ll soon be listed as a punctuation form in Wikipedia. We talk in caps with abandon, though the only person I’ve ever known to really speak compellingly that way is John Irving’s Owen Meany.

And those are the more benign examples. Think to what lengths others are willing to go in text, Mark Foley notwithstanding.

When possible, I’m a face-to-face advocate. This form of conversation can be more disruptive, but it also operates as a self-check. Is what I have to say important enough to interrupt another colleague’s flow of work or, sometimes even more crucially, unimportant enough to do the same?

I’m not saying we should eliminate email altogether. But I do think we need to be more judicious in when and what we send. When I punctuate my emails with exclamation points, would a simple modifier be more in keeping with who I am? (I can understand why my 10-year-old’s best friend uses multiple exclamation points after her long-distance “I miss you” sign-off, but professional adults?) For that matter, couldn’t that :) be better communicated with words, or is it really a disingenuous smile after a harsh word? If that’s the case, please talk to me in person about it. And as for that party-list-length CC, is what I have to say worthy of chinking a glass and commanding the attention of a whole room?

I have to admit, I break all these guidelines daily, which makes me a total hypocrite. And I am feeling a tad cynical today. But really, I’m trying. RU?!! (just kidding, :) LOL!!

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