E-mail that illustrious invention of the e-age has allowed the timid and not so bold to cloak their fears of ‘face-to-face’ by providing an alternative channel to vent their true feelings; Editor’s Comment looks at whether this growing e-boldness is no better then Shakespeare’s Hamlet in which we learn of Ophelia’s deception from behind the arras.

The ketchup-gate saga that hit the headlines this week is a prime example. Jenny Amner, a Bexleyheath legal secretary has managed to splash her story around the world by virtue of a few clicks and some grapevine, viral marketing.

Mr Phillips, her boss is reported by the Bromley Times to have sent Ms Amner an email following a meal in which some ketchup was accidentally spilt on his trousers.

The message is touted to have read, “Hi Jenny, I went to a dry cleaner’s at lunch and they said it would cost £4 to remove ketchup stains. If you cd let me have the cash today, that wd be much appreciated.”

Amner, who was outraged at the fiscal prudence of her £100,000 a year boss retorted:

“With reference to the e-mail below, I must apologise for not getting back to you straight away but due to my mother’s sudden illness, death and funeral I have more pressing issues than your £4.

“I apologise again for accidentally getting a few splashes of ketchup on your trousers. Obviously your financial need as a senior associate is greater than mine as a mere secretary.”

The Amner and Phillips case is not the first and certainly won’t be the last in the hall of fame for gurgle-chuckling e-blunders.

Indeed, recently a Royal Navy officer working at the Pentagon sent top-secret documents to a Devon schoolgirl by mistake because of a typing error in his intended recipient’s address.

But while we snigger about their misfortune it is certainly food for thought when we consider whether this new e-boldness is a good thing.

Consider the same ketchup scenario before the advent of e-mail, surely any secretary would have thought twice about bombarding her boss with a torrent of abuse if the only other recourse for confrontation were face-to-face? Indeed would Phillips have had the audacity to ask for the money if he’d had to in person? I think not.

While I’m not an advocate of a Victorian sweatshop in which you’d get beaten for stepping out of turn it does seem as though some of the normal social rules we lead our lives by get dismissed when we converse by e-mail.

For when we step into e-mail land we also open up a new door in which bullies, psychos and time-wasters can prowl on the vulnerable at their leisure.

The bcc (blind carbon copy) function doesn’t help. We’ve become adept at stabbing our colleagues in the back by copying in other people without the subject’s knowledge.

And it would seem as though this e-mail misuse is not only getting us into hot water socially and mentally but it is also having repercussions on the purse-strings.

According to business consultants, Emphasis, companies are missing an opportunity to save the thousands of hours spent reading unnecessary email or even to combat email bullying and the poor morale that causes.

“Just because email is free, that doesn’t mean it’s cheap,” says Robert Ashton, senior consultant at Emphasis.

“A message that takes up one line in your electronic-in-box can take just as much time and money to process as a document that someone puts on your desk. And many people receive more than 30 such messages a day.”

As for time-wasting, finding someone who hasn’t been copied in unnecessarily or has never received a spam about the delights of Viagra is as difficult as finding a needle in a haystack.

Ashton adds: “Much of this email traffic is unnecessary. Often messages are copied to colleagues unnecessarily, or many people email their colleagues when it would have been easier to pick up the phone – or even walk to their desk and talk to them.”

Yet, says Emphasis, the worrying part is that we’re totally comfortable with it and more so then we are actually speaking to each other.

A fact they say that prompted lottery company, Camelot to introduce ‘no-email Fridays’ and another firm to order employees to wear red baseball caps every time they opened Outlook Express.

On the flip side, Dr Gilly Salmon, Professor of E-learning & Learning Technologies, University of Leicester and Director of Online Training Company www.atimod.com told me that web tools including web-conferencing much like the email phenomena is having an impact on the types of contributions being made at virtual meetings.

“You will get better contributions from some people using the web then when you do with face to face discussions, because online is both a social and psychological environment. Many people would be reluctant to contribute in a face to face meeting but will do so online.”

So it would seem that e-mail has become our comfort blanket. Rather like children who are wedded to their ‘blanky’ and have a tantrum if it can’t be found before bed-time we too have become psychologically trapped by a universal shield, email. It allows us to chat freely with our seniors, eminent doctors, spokespeople, politicians and powerful business people from all around the globe who we wouldn’t normally have access to and it gives us a channel in which to vent our true thoughts.

Rather like the comforter, detaching the child from its blanket or taking the ‘e’ out of working is an altogether bigger step and while we wouldn’t want to do without it altogether perhaps it’s about time that we got back to basics, picked up the phone once in a while, went to our colleagues desk and had a chat rather then e-mailing them from the seat next door about lunch arrangements and controlled ourselves just a little. The best bit of advice anyone can give you regarding email etiquette is to save to draft, once in a while, often an email doesn’t seem as wise after you’ve cooled down a little!

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