One of my tasks at work yesterday was clearing out my email. I would have had at least double the spam but in week one of my holidays I religiously deleted the spam and emptied my Deleted Items folder so I have no record of the number of emails from that week. By week two I was just deleting them and leaving them in Deleted Items. [Edit: I neglected to say that I had 427 spam emails when I got in on Monday. Scary stuff!]
And that was just the spam. I also had to sort through all the other legitimate email, file things that needed filing, take action on some, and ponder others. I was glad I’d deleted most of the spam. A couple of my colleagues said they’d also felt the need to clear out their email periodically during the break, and one colleague who didn’t, spent most of her day sitting and staring at her pc, shaking her head and muttering about email.
I couldn’t help myself and looked through the spam before I deleted it. Lately there hasn’t been much spam poetry, but I’ve noticed that some of the senders’ purported names have been quaint and somewhat poetic: Rosella Platt, Carmella Darling, Malachi Johnson, Sylvester Henry, Sybylla Montoya…
I see a name and address like this: Ivory Ziegler, juphoffrel@gonenlicx.com and I wonder where they get the names from. Maybe the spammers think the names are more meaningful and will attract our attention, or something. Unfortunately it is having a bad effect on me – I am getting suspicious of emails with unusual names. The other day I nearly trashed an email I needed to read, because the sender’s name was Myrtle Bambara** and I thought it was spam.
Thankfully, today there should be less spam and commiserations with each other over the tragedy of being back at work. A few of us were sitting around moaning about needing an afternoon nap (me), sore backs due to too much gardening (a couple of colleagues) and how much we wished we were elsewhere (all of us), when one of the Deputy Uber Bosses came up to talk to me. I’m sure she heard what we were whinging about, but she didn’t say anything about it.
I’m tired this morning, hence the scattered nature of this post. Blah.
* Title from spam poetry collection.
** Name has been changed to protect the innocent.
Categories: spam, work, summerjoys
2 Comments
I wouldn’t be where I am today if Anne Lucas from Micro Forte hadn’t forgot to attach a document!
Her name appeared as “annelucas” – which for a company, you’d expect it to be presented properly, Anne Lucas. I deleted her first email even prior to looking at the subject line! Then a second came through and at this point, spam usually didn’t get sent twice by the same person in such a short amount of time… because of this, I looked at it, realised it read “Application test for Micro Forte” and with a grin from ear to ear, went back to the deleted folder and read the initial email 🙂
Howdy Kris, thanks for sharing that cautionary tale. Glad it all turned out well!