Death By Email Blog

School Superintendent's Lewd Emails Caught By Technology Department

Fired Glynn County, Georgia schools Superintendent Michael Bull used his school system BlackBerry and email address to seek sex from people posting classified ads on the Internet, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported Wednesday.  Copies of Bull’s e-mails, obtained by the Georgia Times-Union and The Brunswick News, show he was sending email messages to advertisers offering sex on the popular national free classified advertising Web site Craigslist.

Written in brief but lewd language, the emails solicited specific sexual acts and situations. In response, some people asked Bull for photographs, according to the emails from the Times-Union. 

"I was on my Blackberry, went into Craigslist and therefore, that's where the problem began," Bull said to the Brunswick News. "I regret what happened and I can't undo it."

Bull's emails, sent through the school system's computer system, were discovered by Information Technology Department employees Thursday in a routine scan of the system for improper usage by anyone on any school equipment.

No Easter Egg Hunt This Year

Dean Grose, the mayor of Los Alamitos, a city near Los Angeles and Long Beach, CA, shocked recipients with an email showing the White House lawn filled with watermelons and the headline, "No Easter Egg Hunt This Year."

"I was horrified when I read that email," said Keyanus Price, a local businesswoman, community volunteer, and an African American told the Orange County Register yesterday. "What I'm concerned about is how can this person send an email out like this and think it is OK? ...  I think he's saying that since there's a black president, there will be no need to hunt for eggs since they're growing watermelons in the front yard this year," Price wrote.

The newspaper said that she responded to the email with: "Hey, that's not nice at all. Not all black people like watermelon… you should know better than that."

Grose replied: "The way things are today, you gotta laugh every now and then. I wanna see the coloring contests."

Price said Grose's response upset her more.

"As soon as I saw his response; that put me over the top because it was no big deal to him," she said.

It is unknown how many people received the email.  Grose reportedly an email apology to Price, her boss and the City Council

Will The Art of Language Return?

I have received many text messages with such fine writing as R-U-There? and C-U-Soon.  But a recent article by Lucy Kellaway in the Irish Times reports that the fine art of writing may be returning:

LAST WEEK I received a text message from a colleague that read: “I, sadly, will be late for our meeting; the Underground is running with long delays.”

I gazed at this message for some time. The fact that this young man was going to be late was of little interest; the fact that he had used one full stop, two commas and one semicolon to tell me so was of very great interest indeed. If a 26-year-old sends elaborately punctuated text messages, does this herald the end of an era?

To find out, she graded the 100 most recently received unsolicited emails from readers, and graded them for style, punctuation and formality.  She compared them to a similar test she ran in 2000.  What hath nine years wrought?

"The results prove beyond reasonable doubt that the pendulum has swung away from slouchy informality towards correct usage. In 2000, more than a quarter of emails were entirely written in lower case," Kellaway reported.  "In the recent batch only one e-mail shunned the capital letter, and that came not from a young techie but from a man who had worked on Wall Street in the 1960s. As his use of language was otherwise impeccable I am inclined to think that the reason for the absence of capitals was that the gentleman was having difficulty operating the shift key."

What else did she find?

• In 2000, there was a rich variety in email sign-offs. One of the most common was “rgds”.  She described it as "a hateful little abbreviation, insulting in its implication that the writer is too busy to make three extra key strokes for the recipient’s benefit."

  Yet in the 2009 group there was only one “rgds”, and instead “Yours Sincerely”, even “Yours Faithfully” have made walloping comebacks.

• The surname has returned. Nearly 40 per cent of her recent emails addressed her as “Ms Kellaway”, “Mrs Kellaway” or “Lucy Kellaway.”  Often, before the name came “Dear”. This is firmly back in fashion, while “Hi” and “Hey”, which were both in vogue in 2000, are on the way out.

Gmail Service Resumes After Outage

Google's Gmail service was out worldwide for three hours this morning, although the problems appear to be fixed.  Gtalk also apparently was having problems and may still be out in some cases.  The cause of the problem and how it was solved was not yet released.  The Gmail blog was less than revealing:

If you’ve tried to access your Gmail account today, you are probably aware by now that we’re having some problems. Shortly after 109:30am GMT our monitoring systems alerted us that Gmail consumer and businesses accounts worldwide could not get access to their email.

Outages like these are taken seriously by the folks at Google as they try to convince more and more people to outsource their email and applications to them.

"So long, suckers! I'm out!"

"So long, suckers! I'm out!" may not be the most elegant way to leave your employer.  But, the Los Angeles Times reported yesterday that the resignation/termination email is becoming an art form.  On one extreme, it can burn bridges.  But, on the other side, it can launch new careers.

The "So long, suckers! I'm out!" email came from Jason Shugars, a senior sales compliance specialist at Google.  Google's corporate culture enabled Shugars to reminisce about workplace moments that included putting cake down his pants at a sales conference, stealing a boss' $8,000 leather couch and singing "Hit Me Baby One More Time" in a miniskirt and braids.

Will Schwalbe, coauthor of "Send: Why People E-mail So Badly and How to Do it Better," said the farewell email has become a reflection of two intersecting trends: the universality of e-mail and the confessional spirit of the times, which have resulted, as he put it, in "the democratization of the process."

The L.A. Times gave other examples of the good-bye email:

• Jaime Cardenas, a young sports reporter, spliced his note with stanzas from Coldplay's "Viva La Vida" ("I used to rule the world . . . Now in the morning I . . . Sweep the streets I used to own.").
• Perry Crowe, an editor for the Guide, compared losing his job to a scene from a movie: "It's sort of like in Superman II when Non rips the light off the top of a police car and hurls it at a boy in the distance and it explodes like a motherlovin' mortar round and a woman cries out, 'He was just a boy!' "
• Shinyung Oh, who was let go from the San Francisco branch of the Paul Hastings law firm six days after losing a baby, sent a blistering email to the partners and fired it off to about 1,000 colleagues around the world. 
• For 20 years, Steve Bass wrote for PC World. He had a popular monthly column, a blog and an electronic newsletter called Tips & Tweaks.  When we was let go, he wrote a farewell email to 60,000 readers.  "I lost a hefty chunk of change," Bass wrote. "It's still a stunner. . . . It gets worse. . . . Unfortunately, the guy I had to deal with didn't know how to negotiate. His tactic was to just say no to everything."  Steve Fox, who became PC World's new editorial director shortly after Bass was sacked, said he received about 100 angry emails.  Bass was invited to stay on the masthead as a contributing editor and write occasional features.
• Richard Bravo, the 34-year-old managing editor of the menswear trade publication DNR (Daily News Record), was let go just three days short of his third anniversary, so his severance credited him for only two years.  His mass email announcement led to several freelance jobs.

The message that I take away is that a classy good-bye could lead to good things.  So, write it carefully and don't be shy about the size of your email list.  One of the risks for email administrators is when REPLY-TO-ALL is used when recipients respond to say goodbye.

Obama Justice Deparment Continues Bush Email Policies

On Saturday, the Obama administration Justice Department supported the efforts of the administration of former President George W. Bush's to block the release of millions of missing White House emails. 

The Justice Department, in an effort started under Bush, filed a motion to dismiss a suit filed by the Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics and the National Security Archive intended to compel the White House to release the messages.  The Bush Administration claimed Executive Privilege and that the courts did not have the power to order the White House to retrieve any missing messages.  

On Saturday, the Obama Justice Department let slip the deadline to withdraw the government's motion dismiss the lawsuit. 

“President Obama on Day One ordered the government to become more transparent, but the Justice Department apparently never got the message," said Tom Blanton, director of the National Security Archive.

Who Are The Email Innovators?

Thank you, Pete Warden, for listing me as one of the few email innovators in your blog entry, "Who Are The Email Innovators?"  The list includes just six names.  So, I am very honored.  I will try to live up to being in that list of incredible names:

• Deva Hazarika

• T.A. McCann

• Gabor Cselle

• Sherman Dickman

• Joshua Baer

• Roger Matus

3 Rules For Posting On Facebook

I am quoted today in USA Today in an excellent article by Ed Baig entitled How to make the most of social networking on Facebook. What was my contribution?

"One of my Facebook friends, Roger Matus, CEO of e-mail archiving company InBoxer, recommends three tests before posting: Would you be upset if your mother saw it? Would you be upset if the most nefarious person you ever heard about saw it? Would you be upset if it was on the front page of USA TODAY?"

Reply-To-All Continues To Be Evil

Last month, this blog reported that the State Department ordered employees not to use the Reply-To-All button after an email storm brought the email servers to their knees.  Now, we learn that Nielsen has deployed a technological solution to block Reply-to-All.

"We have noticed that the “Reply to All” functionality results in unnecessary inbox clutter. Beginning Thursday we will eliminate this function, allowing you to reply only to the sender. Responders who want to copy all can do so by selecting the names or using a distribution list. Eliminating the “Reply to All” function will:

• Require us to copy only those who need to be involved in an e-mail conversation
• Reduce non-essential messages in mailboxes, freeing up our time as well as server space," said Andrew Cawood, Nielsen Chief Information Officer.

While the idea is right, companies are moving to a brute force method of solving the problem of too many emails causing information overload and potential security leaks.  Permessa Corporation has software that measures the number of recipients and the size of a message to see its impact.  This could solve the reply-to-all problem without preventing legitimate business activity.  (Disclosure: I have done marketing work for Permessa.)

Tip of the Hat to Email Tide, TechCrunch.

Email From Peanut CEO Urged Shipment of Suspect Products

Even after Peanut Corp. of America learned its products were tainted with salmonella, the top executive, concerned about losing money, told employees to ship suspect products anyway, according to information released at a congressional hearing.  This blog's Caught By Email series shows documents that indicate that there could be a willingness to put profits ahead of public safety.  (Complete email text.) 

• In one email, Sammy Lightsey, manger of the Blakely, Georgia plant at the center of one of the biggest food poisoning cases in recent history, wrote company president Stewart Parnell to discuss positive salmonella tests on one batch of its products. Parnell gave instructions to nonetheless “turn them loose” after getting a negative test result from another testing company. 

• "We need to protect ourselves and the problem is that the tests absolutely give us no protection, just an indication at best," Mr. Parnell wrote to Mr. Lightsey in an Oct. 6, 2008, email after he was told of lab tests that came back positive for salmonella.

• In another email, Parnell expressed concerns over losing “$$$$$” due to delays in shipment. "The time lapse, besides the cost is costing us huge $$$$$ and causing obviously a huge lapse in time from the time we pick up peanuts until the time we can invoice."

• In a company-wide email on Jan. 12, Parnell told employees there was no salmonella in its plants — “we have never found any salmonella at all” — and accused the news media of “looking for a news story where there currently isn’t one.”

• On Jan. 19, Parnell sent an email to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, pleading with the agency to let it continue its business. He wrote that company executives “desperately at least need to turn the raw peanuts on our floor into money.”

Tip of the hat to Wall Street Journal and Atlanta Journal-Constitution.