When 30 year olds behave like 3 year old...

"Kalyanam panni paar, veettai katti paar" meaning perform a wedding and see, build a house and see is not a faltu (something like worthless) statement after all. The difficulty in organizing a wedding by the bride's father is matched to the difficulty in building a house. The wedding part, once the marriage is performed the parents can be rest assured the girl is in safe hands and they take good care of her and vice versa. But when it comes to the house, a flat in our case, its a life long tragedy of putting up with few jug-heads. The book, Bonsai Manager clearly states that the politics in running a company of the size of Tata (s) is far less than the politics of running an apartment society. This is so very true!

When you buy an apartment, you dont want to be left behind on some important news and notices about Khata transfer, Service Tax and many more - things that require all of the clients to stand together to fight against the builder or the government. So we subscribe ourselves to the e groups or the common floor community mailing list and all those on earth. For once i acted wisely and subscribed with my mail id that i retired a few years ago. Retired as in I dont use it for mailing/ stay-in-touch purposes but for other uses like e-cards, e-shopping registration, e- reservation etc. I make it a point to check it once in a month or so. I happened to browse through it today and noticed many many funny yet annoying instances. But, looking at the amazing emails, looks like i will be checking that inbox more often - a great way of entertainment!

Corporate mailing rule1 : Do not subscribe your official id to any kind of social networking sites or e groups.

Do we adhere to these rules, NO, NEVER. First thing we do as we receive our mail id at work, email all our folks and send a note asking them to add this new-official-mail-id to all the existing groups. Put the same mail id on Orkut or Facebook or Twitter, simple because they are banned at our workplace and we will remain clueless what our friends are up to when we are at our desks just pretending to work. And the need to be updated with all/any kind of news the very nanosecond the sender clicks send.

Corporate mailing rule2: Never do a Reply-all, unless your message is of public interest or one that requires wider audience and opinions.

No and never adhere to this rule too, even if its the same message they are trying to propagate, they reply-all saying, " Please do not reply-all" instead of just sending it to the sender alone.

The next hilarious bunch of mails i noticed are the ones announcing the availability of the flat for rent or sale. Of the 40 minutes i spent in reading through the 75 odd emails, i noticed 30+ friends of the current occupants wanting to rent a flat, 5+ friends wanting to buy, 20+ owners wanting to rent out , 4+ owners wanting to sell. Note that these gentlemen and ladies sending our mails asking "if any flat is available for..." are not doing so for themselves but for their friends who are trying to move to Bangalore from elsewhere. When they are so very concerned and really want to help them find a house, since they are already on this mailing list, they should simply do a search in their archives/ Inbox and give them the contact details of the already advertised flats/owners. No, they will never do that, simply because - its home work <=> hard work.

Instead they plainly send out a mail saying "my good friend is looking for an apartment to rent..." CC-ing him of course, is the highest honor of help they are doing to that person. And this fellow who is interested in renting out, does not email the person on CC, rather would do a reply to the whole egroups announcing his flat's availability.

The same goes with buying and selling. The owner who wants to sell does not do his home work reading through his old emails and contacting those prospective buyers, but once again emails the group. Assuming that the person who sent a mail out asking if there was any flat on sale would pay attention to his email now. But, why would he, he emailed not for his sake but his friend's, about whom he probably would have forgotten the minute he sent the mail out copying his mail address. And so, this mail now is of no use and again goes into their collection of emails.

When nobody really reads any email, why do they want to get their official ids subscribed ? If you give me an answer that you are the busiest man at work, then 1st thing to do is unsubscribe the official id from the groups. None of the emails are serving their purpose. Even more annoying, getting an Out-of-Office response on egroups. When will these people ever grow up ?Have these people picked up new hobby of email-collection ??

There's an other episode of the nosy 60 year olds who read all their emails, rather every line of the email and reply-all asking unwanted questions. Will write more on it tomorrow may be, when 60 years old behave like 6 year olds.