My work friend - the one who gives me her too-small clothes? Firstly, I'll give her a blog name. She shall be known as Partygirl.
Partygirl actually gave herself that nickname one day when she selected nicknames for everyone at the workplace. I will note that, since that day, the nicknames rarely surface if at all. Probably the most used is Boss "Grumpy Bear" because it suits him. My bestowed nickname, by the way, is "Sporty Spice".
Anyhoo, the workload had been relatively light at the beginning of this month before students returned to campus. One day, Partygirl mentioned finding an email from an old boyfriend and subsequently catching up with him (Partygirl is married, no hanky-panky related to old boyfriend email), and I asked how old the found email was.
"From the beginning of time?", she guessed.
I didn't understand, and so she explained that she's been going through her personal email and cleaning out her inbox. At that point she was down to about 5,000 items as she showed me her brimming inbox.
"WHAAAAAT?"
Yeah, she'd started with around 15,000 items, so had made quite a dent.
Okay, I know plenty of people don't clean out their email inboxes. I am not one of those people. I strive to have my inboxes (I've more than one email, do you?) empty - the only things in there at any given time are items I need to either act on or delete. I have a few folders for storing things I need to keep, but the inbox itself is typically clear.
My phone offers some sort of graphic when the gmail inbox is empty. This is what it looks like now - a red flag raised above some cubbies?
Note: I took the screenshot, emailed it to myself to load into this blog post, then promptly deleted it from the inbox...
So I asked coworker Bu-chan (Japanophile) the state of his inbox. Turns out he was also a non-deleter. Thankfully, we do have a shared email for the office that is routinely sorted and cleared out. *Whew*.
So I pondered. Why do I empty my inbox? Well, it's the same reason I organize my desk or my kitchen or my underwear drawer, right? It makes things I need to find so much easier to find. It's Marie Kondo for email. Plus, I'm a clutterphobe since before Marie Kondo. Electronic clutter is still clutter. It's not OCD... It's not OCD... It's not OCD...
Me: May I see your COVID vaccination card or negative test result?
Them: Yep, I'll just pull it up on my phone
*proceeds to spend what feels like an hour swiping, typing, swiping, typing, swiping, typing, digging through their email or gallery to get the damn image up on the phone*
Me: *inaudible* omigod.
So I'm curious.
Keeper or Deleter?
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Linking up this week with Mama Kat for the prompt:
4. Write a blog post inspired by the word: curious
5 comments:
I'm a deleter married to a keeper. I clear out my in box every day of new mail and delete a lot of it after reading it. My hubby on the other hand has about 400 emails he still has to open and then after he opens them if he still wants them he'll mark them "unread". I don't know how he keeps track of it all but it would drive me crazy to have that high of a number in my in box.
Glad for the most part people are reasonable when asked to show their vaccination card or negative testing :)
Happy weekend!
betty
I have a lot of email folders where I keep this I need. I do not like clutter, in my home or in my email. I'm a weirdo like that
Well, I have two personal email accounts that I actively use. I try to keep them clean-ish, but I have allowed both addresses to be subscribed to mailing lists for retailers, websites, etc. I'm too chicken to just select all and delete, but I probably should. My work email is subject to a 50-day default deletion policy. The Information Governance team (of which I am a member) implemented that policy last year. My home self should learn from my work self.
Betty, I've managed to coax my husband away from the Dark Side (Keepers).
Peggy, Yes! Weirdos, unite!
Tee, beware mailing lists from retailers. They're relentless.
I'm a deleter. Although in addition to emails that need action, I also tend to fill my inbox with emails "I'll act on eventually, maybe"...so I normally have about 40 emails in my inbox. As long as it doesn't go to a second page I'm FINE. I'm also a filer. My photos and important emails all have folders that make finding them a breeze!
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