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There are few things that get under my skin more than emailed urban legends. Almost all of them are false. I feel we have a responsibility to do a bit of research before emailing articles that could turn out to be a hoax or worse, a virus. My favorite website to check this stuff out: http://www.snopes.com/. They do the research and post the results.
I’ve lost several friendships to date after I get sent some of this junk, and I click “respond to all” with a link proving the forward false. Call me crazy, but if a friend can’t handle the truth, and wouldn’t want all the people they forwarded the lies to, to also be aware of the truth, they’re not much of a friend.
Today, though, sent me over the edge. I get an email urban legend – at work – forwarded by our regional manager. He must be intelligent, to have survived four rounds of blood-bath style middle-management purges thanks to the over-leveraging of our company by other intelligent directors and CEOs. But I digress.
This particular email is a scare tactic about how you must put your cell phone number into the National Do Not Call list because otherwise your cell number will be released to telemarkers by the end of the month.
My asst branch manager received it from the region, and forwarded it on to our office. I clicked "respond", and pleasantly informed her that despite the email’s seemingly reliable source (our regional manager), this is merely urban legend. She responds cryptically, “Well, it came from the region, so I’m just doing my job to forward it on to everyone else.”
Yeah, yeah, yeah. If all middle management shuts down their brains on the job like this, then I’d say the aforesaid blood-bath was justified.
I’d really like to choke somebody. It’s not the pot-smoking unemployed high-school dropout who created the email. I don’t expect much from him. It’s everyone with a legitimate full time job, a college education, and some of their brain left that hasn’t been destroyed by dope and tv, who keeps this stuff going and going and going! It’s the Energizer Bunny of idiocy. And when upper management participates, adding an official name/title/firm footer to this stuff, there’s no end to the madness!
And to make matters completely incomprehensible, middle management, when given facts disputing this craziness, won’t even consider going back to pick up their brain just for a moment. Now I really really really want to choke someone. The world really is going to hell in a handbasket. Oh, hold up, I gotta run, that’s a great phrase to use in my newest email…..hell in a handbasket….now how can I work this into a palatable bite for corporate America? Senator Sanford, Bernie Madoff, Raj Rajaratnam - any ideas?
I have to put this into context for you. I work for a global financial firm with over 300,000 employees and 6,000 offices worldwide. The regional director in question likely makes six digits, and supervises 10 branches in 3 cities, with 500 employees. Yet despite this, he lacks sufficient brain power to recognize an urban legend. There clearly is nothing his Ivy League education, paycheck size, or decades of corroboration with other equally brainy men around long marble tables could do to initiate the common-sense portion of his brain. He probably sends money to Nigeria too.
Urban Legend Emails have tell-tale warning signs. In this email, here is a sampling:
“By the end of this month!” (with no specific date mentioned),
“You will be charged!”,
“Act RIGHT NOW!”,
“Help others pass this on!”,
“It only takes 20 seconds!”,
incorrect grammar,
false information,
plenty of <>
and the big giveaway, the blue “bar” next to the text that denotes forwarded text.
If someone gives you legitimate, helpful information, do they usually make it sound like a desperate pitch from a balding car salesman with twelve kids who’s about to get fired if he doesn’t sell you a brand spanking new hot pink Hummer when you came shopping for a five-year old used Civic?
Since my regional director clearly checks his brain at the doorstep of his office when he walks in this morning, he misses these warning signs. Instead, he forwards the email to his sub-managers, who forward it to their operations managers (one in each branch), who forward it to everyone in their respective offices, including ours.
Within minutes, I overhear one of my co-workers calling a high-net worth client to “walk them through” setting up their cell phone with Do Not Call. Yup. Hopefully the millionaire she's calling can manage to drag their brain into the conversation, so someone, somehow, can stop the madness.