I love e-mail.
I read pretty much every e-mail I get. That request you sent out for a Science B-35 textbook? I didn’t answer it, but I read it. That time you accidentally invited all of Eliot on vacation with you? Hilarious. See you in Cabo.
But the multiple messages are getting out of hand. Let me explain why this tactic does not work.
The first time I get your e-mail asking me to help starving, illiterate orphans, I briefly consider it before I realize that the orphans would likely want me to pass my history midterm.
The second time, I begin to feel bad about myself as a person and decide to join the peace corps when I graduate as penance.
The third time, I start to think you’re just showing off. I remind myself of the time I worked in an old-age home and successfully reinvent myself as a humanitarian. The indoors kind.
The fourth time, I am actually mad at the orphans.
The fifth time, I think I will show up to the event, and then leave just as I walk in the door, leaving only a pile of your printed up e-mails as an explanation.
To spare you all from reading the crazy thing I have planned for the 14th e-mail (and there have been events where the count surpasses 14), let me be brief: mass e-mails succeed only in pissing off the people on your lists. If I don’t want to cook dumplings at 12:46 a.m., barring any sort of national dumpling crisis, I probably won’t want to cook them at 12:58 a.m.
Oh, and another thing? If you’re going to bombard me with e-mails, at least have the decency to change the subject line from “Please FWD to your houselists :)”
Please.
Do it for the kids.
