‘You can’t delete my emails': IT employee informs coworkers he cannot retrieve old emails due to company's mail retention policy, they turn to upper management

Eleonora Bader

Jan 22, 2024 12:00 PM EST

Don't store important files in your email. There, I said it.

The chances of something happening and them all getting deleted are slim, but never zero. This advice applies even more so if you are working in a company with a mail retention policy. These employees were furious when they learned from the IT guy that every email that was older than 2 years was gone, permanently deleted, and irretrievable. They had some important financial documents that they wanted to check out again, but alas, there was nothing the IT guy could do… Except explain that they had gotten a fair warning in the form of multiple fine print across various platforms that they had been using Well, that just wasn't enough for them, and they decided to take it to higher-ups, refusing to accept this as the status quo. I do feel for them, truly, as this has happened to me more than once in my short 30 years on earth. Once, before Google docs were a thing, I forgot to click 'save' on Microsoft Word. And 3 whole pages of an essay I'd worked so hard on were gone.

Scroll down for the full story, then check out this snow shoveling neighbor who told a woman in his neighborhood to shove it after she was ungrateful for his help.