When I was assistant manager, my boss had contact with one of the accountants in one of the most important supplier companies they had. They got along perfectly every time he came to Ecuador to visit. The problem started when he sent his first e-mail. My boss read it and he got really mad, it was a very rude and insulting e-mail. The second time a problem with work arose, he did the same thing and every time my boss would call him to ask what did he meant with those e-mails he would answer so nicely and explain everything in a polite way. Our conclusion after three of those situations was that he was just really bad at writing e-mails.
What he lacked most from the ten habits of successful emailers was number 3. I don’t think he would have sent those e-mails after re-reading them and realizing the tone they were written in. It would have made a difference just to change some of the words.
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I think that if the one man was from the U.S. and the other was from Ecuador there could be a cultural difference in how the two would communicate. I know that speaking with friends at Purdue that are from other countries that certain phrases mean different things and that something here in America could be very normal and in other countries could be seen as insulting. Then again the man in your story could be really bad at writing emails. If a simple fix of just rereading the message could avoid a situation as this, I think it would be a great idea for that accountant to read up on how to properly send emails.
It's funny you said because
It's funny you said because it's true. With people from the U.S. we have a lot of diferences when writing e-mails andeverytime I read an email at Purdue I take it as a cultural diference and try adapt to it. The accountant, though, is Perubian and in Latin America we have similar email etiquette for every country. I know this because we also exchanged emails with other Perubians, Colombians and Chileans constantly.
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It is pretty amazing what an email can do! If you can't write a good email it can ruin a person's relationship with coworkers, a boss and friends. It would even ruin the trust that they have in that person. This is a perfect example of this. If you can't write in a nice, polite and business like tone then you really have a problem in a professional setting. It is pretty amazing that they got along in person but the boss couldn't stand him when he contacted him through emails! It really just shows how essential professional and successful emailing skills really are.