It might be scary, but at least it's not corporate

I was reminded today of a conversation Doobie and I had a few months ago.

I'd been lounging at home focusing all my energy on doing nothing at all, when suddenly the phone rang. "Ficali!!! It's me! I need your help!"

It was Doobie, in some kind of crisis or another.

"What's up Doobie?"

"I'm stuck in the airport and I forgot to turn in my time report! Can you email my boss and send in my hours for me? The deadline is 5 minutes away!"

So I logged into her laptop, and typed up an email to her boss in the most Doobie-esque language I could muster.

"There, I'm done. Should I put a smiley at the end?"

"Smiley? Are you kidding? Nobody does that in the corporate world! My boss would think I was crazy!"

I was appalled. Seems to me, when you're writing groveling email to your boss explaining how you forgot to send your timesheet in and could they please regard this hurriedly scribbled email as a record of your hours, the least you an do is soften the tone with a smiley (or two). At least, seems like that's what everyone in my company does.

I mean, if you were Mr Boss Man, which one would you rather receive?

-I'm very sorry I did not submit the timesheet, but here are my hours below. - OR -

- Hey, I'm really sorry I didn't submit the timesheet, but here's my hours below! :)

You see what I mean?! Worlds apart.

"You seriously don't use smileys? Doesn't that seem a bit cold? I mean, you guys do actually like eachother, right?"

And so we embroiled ourselves in debate about the appropriate placement of smileys (Doobie thought nowhere, I thought everywhere), and argued for a while until I realised I had forgotten to actually "send" the email and her deadline was almost up.

"Okay Doobs gotta send this email bye!". And I sent it. Sans smiley and all. Cold as ice, I say.

I had entirely forgotten about the entire affair, when I receive the email below from Richie Rich the other day. And naturally, it got me re-thinking about smileys and all.

So today I did a smiley count on my emails (because that is exactly the sort of stuff that throws a bone in my efficiency on particularly busy days).

And out of the 517 emails I received/sent today, 487 had a smiley in them. You see what I mean? This is where I've learnt it from. I work in a culture where we smile to each other. All the time. In every email. And nice though it be to get the odd bolstering smile, I do believe we've reached the point where, perhaps even I would admit, it's getting rather scary.

Scary, but better than the corporate world anyway :)