Responding to e-mails in a timely fashion is something I’m very good at. Unless they’re from girls named Lexxxi or BustyBabe23— who claim to be horny and living near me in North Hollywood—I take a certain pride in quickly getting back to people.
But I decided to stop doing that. That’s right. I’m no longer going to respond to e-mails that I deem stupid or pointless. It’s just not worth my time.
What prompted me to take such action?
I recently received an e-mail from a former employer. We’ll call him Balthazar. Balthazar’s e-mail inquired whether or not I had received a check he sent me a week earlier. Balthazar also wanted to know if I remembered exactly how much the check he wrote was for. When I received this inquiry, I began typing a timely reply as I usually do. But something stopped me. It’s like there was a glitch in the Matrix. Whatever it was, it forced me to reevaluate my stance on e-mails like Balthazar’s. Here’s why:
1) I had cashed Balthazar’s check almost a week prior to his inquiry.
2) I honestly don’t remember the exact amount because Balthazar had written it down to the dollars and cents of what he owed me (No one rounds up during a recession).
3) Instead of sending me an e-mail, couldn’t Balthazar have saved himself the trouble of waiting for my response and simply checked his statement?
I once read (in a book), when you have a bank account, there are several easy ways to verify that a check written by you has been cashed by me. And also, there is a cheat code that will tell you the exact amount that you wrote the check for. It’s just like a video game.
So, with that in mind, I refused to respond to Balthazar’s e-mail. And it worked. He hasn’t e-mailed me since, meaning he probably figured out how to solve the Great Checking Account Mystery of 2010. Though I’m sure he had some help.
The moral of the story is, if Balthazar is going to hold me to a high standard in the tasks that I perform for him, I should at least be allowed to hold him to a normal standard when it comes to something as basic as his checking account.
From the bottom of my heart, I thank you, Balthazar, for unintentionally teaching me a valuable lesson about not responding to any more stupid e-mails.Whether you know it or not, you have made my life that much easier.
