Of the many genres of other people’s communication we find amusing to read — the Fuck You, I Quit letter, the Crap E-mail From a Dude, the Postcards From Yo Mamma, the Dirty Politician e-mails — there is one that has gone largely unheralded: the communication that occurs when someone in an office is bothered by something, usually a relatively minor thing, that then wears on the person day in and day out, building into a rage that eventually can be relieved only by penning an officewide e-mail telling everyone to just stop it. If you’ve ever worked in an office building, then you know what we’re talking about.
These missives are usually about the state of the bathroom or the kitchen, and they go like this:
This morning, Buzzfeed printed a triumph of the genre, reportedly from the offices of Gourmet magazine.
Dear slobs,
Ah. You just know that felt good. Since, with the election of Obama, we’ve entered a new era of transparency in America, we would like to encourage office workers around New York to send their favorite inter-office e-mails to us as intel [at] nymag.com, and we’ll print our favorites. And by the way, New York Magazine, whoever threw away or ate the cheese curds Copy Editor Megan brought back from Wisconsin had better sleep with one eye open. Girl is pissed off.
