'I decided to start including the Chairman/CEO... on all emails': 22-year-old employee gets admonished by supervisor for their over-the-top email tactics

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Remy Millisky • Writer and Editor
Nov 6, 2024 5:00 PM EST

This worker has taken a hilariously petty tactic to get employees to reply to them. Rest assured, their boss completely hates this tactic, and the internet has informed them how dumb it is, too. 

Some people refer to "email jobs" as fake work. It's the type of job where you get paid a nice salary and benefits to work 40ish hours per week. Your boss probably doesn't care if you come in a few minutes late or decide to take a long lunch with your colleagues. That's in contrast with retail work or food service, where being even a minute late is a punishable offense, you'll have to be on your feet all day long, and you're probably not making much money at all. Email jobs aren't usually fake work necessarily, they're just much more relaxed environments where smart employees work just as much as they need to, and not a second more. 

This person is about to learn a hard lesson about email jobs, and it's common when you're early in your career. You might think that meeting every deadline and completing every task is key. It's not. What's really important is being a pleasant person to work with. Instead of impressing their bosses with how diligent they are about following up on projects, this person is showing their immaturity and poor communication skills. As commenters pointed out, they might be shown the door fairly quickly if they don't nip this behavior in the bud. 

Next up, check out some bakery mistakes and messed-up cakes, like one person who experienced a "slight misunderstanding at the bakery." 

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    via Getty Images For Unsplash+

    This image is for illustration only, and the subjects are models; the image does not depict the actual subjects of the story.

  • 02
    AITA For CC'ing the CEO on emails for my coworkers who don't respond? I work for a company of 10,000+ people within customer service. At my office, there are a lot of people who don't respond to my emails and those that do sometimes take days.
    via u/Familiar-Jacket
  • 03
    This has been frustrating me recently. If I need a certain document/etc, I have to practically chase down the person to get it. Given that most of us are now working from home, this has made the problem worse. I decided to start including the Chairman/CEO of our company on all emails to coworkers who either never respond/or are very slow.
    via u/Familiar-Jacket
  • 04
    To give some examples, IT is usually slow so when I had an issue with my laptop last week, I included the CEO on it. There was another case where a customer had a question that I didn't know the answer to, so I told the customer I'd get back to him and emailed the coworker (as well as CC'd in the CEO) my question. I've only been doing this for a week but the response rate has been fantastic.
    via u/Familiar-Jacket
  • 05
    My supervisor called me up and told me to stop doing this, and I explained the problem to him. He nonetheless still told me to stop and I agreed to it. However, I am planning on resuming if my coworkers start ignoring me again. I haven't gotten a response from the CEO either so I don't think it's really a big deal? EDIT: To people who are asking, I am 22
    via u/Familiar-Jacket
  • 06
    juswannalurkpls YTA. Your supervisor is the one you should be cc'ing, not the CEO. You're making yourself look like an idiot, as well as your boss.
    via u/juswannalurkpls
  • 07
    srslyeffedmind YTA. You DID get a response from the CEO. Through your supervisor. The appropriate person to include as a cc is your supervisor in these circumstances. This is the wrong way to get on leaderships radar. You're not on their radar for anything good.
    via u/srslyeffedmind
  • 08
    all02116 YTA- adding the CEO is pretty aggressive especially at a company that size. I would stick to CCIng their supervisor or adding read receipts to emails in the future.
    via u/all02116
  • 09
    YTA. You're inappropriately using your CEO on emails as a power-manipulation tactic on your coworkers instead of being an adult and bringing the issue to their attention. Let's say that before all this mess, you actually humored a scenario of possibly using your words like a grownup and talking to your coworkers. If nothing
    via u/gracegilligan
  • 10
    had changed after speaking to them? That would then be the time to go to a higher-up and tell them the problem. If that, though, since this problem seems like it could've been solved pretty quickly all by yourself.
    via u/gracegilligan
  • 11
    But your issue now is that your higher-up, your supervisor, likely won't want to help you solve any of your petty issues. Your supervisor literally told you to stop, and somehow you lack the awareness of your behavior or situation by pondering if you should keep up this childish strategy even though your boss ordered you to stop.
    via u/gracegilligan
  • 12
    I'm gonna go out on a limb here and say he likely didn't. care about your problem when you told him, when he was confronting you, because you've been abusing the CEO's name to instill fear in your coworkers so that they had to respond to your emails.
    via u/gracegilligan
  • 13
    This negatively affected your supervisor, seeing as someone higher-up than him likely confronted him about. you and your poor, unprofessional behavior. You're making your supervisor and yourself look like fools. By all means, keep it up and get fired. Your decision.
    via u/gracegilligan
  • 14
    Bornana YTA. Wow, with big blinking neon lights you are announcing it to the whole company. First, I am a C-level exec and when someone who is not my direct report does this, it sends me sideways. I also usually speak down the chain of command (like a normal person would do in a
    via u/Bornana
  • 15
    company that size) to say "knock it the F-off." If you are more than one level down from the CEO (in an organization that size) and (s)he knows your name its either because you did something so amazing they did a little dance or YTA. For certain the CEO did not dance.
    via u/Bornana
  • 16
    Second, when I imagine how it played out, I think what I would have done ... the message I would have sent looks like "f- the f- is wrong with this f- face, f-er? F- fire the f-". My VP would take that to the manager who might say, "Kick this idiot in the head and tell them to knock it the f- off" and the manager would take it to the supervisor and giggle saying
    via u/Bornana
  • 17
    something like, "Please ask so-n-so to tone it down a wee bit" translated into whatever your supervisor said to you. Unless you work within a heavily religious organization, the CEO said the f-word 3+ times in reference to this and the chain of command smoothed it down because they are professional managers and probably decent humans.
    via u/Bornana
  • 18
    Next, maybe your co- workers are ignoring you because beyond this post YTA? Some signs this may be true... middle of a pandemic where people are flipping out and fearful you take joy in causing additional fear so you can get an answer about your ... laptop. Not like IT had anything better to do while they are operating probably under new distributed security protocols and the like.
    via u/Bornana
  • 19
    Another sign, you didn't know the answer to a question for a customer... so you email someone, apparently a peer...interesting first choice because in every CS organization I have run there is a mile high list of documentation, answer trees, and FAQs for CS staff.
    via u/Bornana
  • 20
    So rather than follow what I suspect would have been proper protocol, you instead bother a co-worker with your question, a question that probably could be answered elsewhere. Wow so you take yourself off line AND take someone else off line because you didn't bother to look for yourself. Just saying what the CEO is thinking.
    via u/Bornana
  • 21
    You being high maintenance makes you undesirable as an employee and a team mate because you only care about yourself and your needs. You harassing people with fear makes you unlikeable. When cuts and layoffs come, everyone will look at you. I just had to do a very sad staff reduction when all of this COVID started, in one of our divisions...if I
    via u/Bornana
  • 22
    personally knew your name and you were front line staff, your name was on the lay off list 100%. When times are tough, a CEO wants people who can come together as a team, work as a cohesive unit, and place petty nonsense aside in an emergency situation. Unless you are a sales rockstar, a cost cutting wizard, or a designer/programmer with insane skills this diva stuff is
    via u/Bornana
  • 23
    never tolerated by the top of any organization (of any size) at any time. Right now, that is an order of magnitude higher.
    via u/Bornana

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