“Lamb Cops. The 5-0 in fleece.” This is the subject line and body of an email I sent my coworker, Ajay this week and he did not find it funny at all. I followed it the next day with “Pork Cops. Don’t call them pigs.” Ajay could not have been less impressed. Today, I skipped the subject line altogether and responded to an email with “Grandma needs a longer nightgown.” Ajay was confused. Whose grandmother? Why would you write this? It’s awful and not funny either. Ajay is right. It wasn’t fair to him or anyone’s grandma. But it’s hard for me as a writer to simply send an attachment with no accompanying text. My little tagline on my work IM is “words are freeeeee”; sending a blank email is contrary to everything I believe in. I’m sure Ajay will come around and learn to appreciate daily, off-color sentence fragments parading as work emails. Either that, or he’ll strangle me to death in the parking lot.
julie warshaw 