'Answer each and every email with "got it"': Boss insists that employee change the "upsetting" tone of their emails

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Remy Millisky • Writer and Editor
Jul 13, 2024 11:00 AM EDT

Email etiquette changes everywhere you go. Politeness is key, of course. But at some workplaces, emails have to be answered in a highly specific way, even if the employees think it's ridiculous. 

Having instant messaging is such a convenient way to avoid emails. It can be such a slog to search for a specific phrase in a lengthy email chain, minimizing everyone's long link-filled signatures as you go. Instant messaging doesn't require you to start every message with an "I hope this email finds you well." It's just quick and to the point. 

For external emails though, like ones between a business and clients, sometimes these things are a necessity. U/Outrageous_Bet7212 writes that as an administrative nurse, they tried to keep their emails brief. But that didn't fly with their boss. This boss didn't like the "tone" of the admin nurse's emails, and had some weird advice to change it up. You can read the full story down below, as well as comments from people who've had a few annoying email situations in their own lives. 

Up next, these goofy goobers are some real dummies according to their friends, like one person whose coworker wouldn't drink water, ever, because "water makes you rust." 

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    4 F A 0
    via Firmbee.com on Unsplash
  • 02
    Boss tells me the tone of your emails is bad etiquette and when I receive an email I should respond GOT IT!
    via u/Outrageous_Bet7212
  • 03
    Thought about this as I read some of the MC stories. I was an administrative nurse working with non-medical people..When I received emails from directors of facilities, I liked to cut to the chase, no elaborate flowering, just trying to keep my replies understandable and short.
    via u/Outrageous_Bet7212
  • 04
    However, had a Nigerian boss who needed to read and approve all my replies... Not long after, I am approached by the boss who says the tone of my emails are upssetting??? !.His solution was for me to answer each and
    via u/Outrageous_Bet7212
  • 05
    every email with "Got It"...answered several of his emails and directors this way...Apparently he got flak. He came to my desk to make sure I wasn't being a smart a ..no, sorry...I must have misunderstood you.
    via u/Outrageous_Bet7212
  • 06
    EcelecticDragon I did not get this email. Sorry.
    via u/EcelecticDragon
  • 07
    MaggieNFredders I had a boss do something similar to this. I had to cc him on every email I sent. He thought I wasn't doing anything I guess??? Anywho I started including him on every email I sent, and since I was emailing him on EVERYTHING I no longer needed to discuss the issues with him as well. It was in an email. Well I
    via u/MaggieNFredders
  • 08
    responded to over a hundred emails daily. Which he now was included on. He would ask me about something and I would say it's in the email from yesterday and let him find it. After two weeks he told me to stop cc'ing him on every email and to go back to the weekly updates. I was a bit disappointed. Not going to lie. Cc'ing him on everything was much easier for me.
    via u/MaggieNFredders
  • 09
    Faux-Foe Just this last week I sent an email that apparently disturbed an entire ant nest. "Several members of the accounting department would appreciate it if we could receive [document]. Thank you for your time."
    via u/Faux-Foe
  • 10
    This apparently SET OFF the person who received it. Motivating them to contact my boss's boss and my boss's boss's boss claiming I was and disrespectful. They then sent me a reply that my boss tells me was (I am not savvy enough in the ways of office passive aggression to see it) and claimed that they had contacted us to inform that the report would be late. (they I sure did not).
    via u/Faux-Foe
  • 11
    So my boss now gets confronted by his boss. demanding an apology from me, my boss flips around the computer screen and says "read the email conversation, tell me how my guy was ". My boss then demands escalation over the way the guy that started this replied to me, saying that this guy breached a lot of our code of conduct in his reply.
    via u/Faux-Foe
  • 12
    Me? I am told all this after the fact. Because all I had done was request a document that we needed to balance the month, a document that was a week late with no contact as to why.
    via u/Faux-Foe
  • 13
    Sweetsnt I wonder in the history of emails if dudes ever get told that the tone of their emails need to change?
    via u/Sweetsnt****
  • 14
    -CJS- I was once told that exclamation points are "too aggressive "in emails, for a catering department at a museum. I stopped using capital letters or any punctuation in fear of being "aggressive ".
    via u/-CJS-

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