Email Etiquette, Think Before you Send...

Like me, you probably use Outlook for your work email. Also, like most people in the world, you probably get ALOT of email on any given day. Some of it is junk, some important and some can probably be ignored until you get around to it.

There are certain things about receiving email to my work account that I really and truly despise.

Read Receipts: Really?!?! Do you REALLY need to know that I got your message? It’s email. Unless it gets bounced back to you, how about you just go ahead and assume I got it?? Also, if I sent you a message and am waiting for a response, the chances are pretty damn good that I’m going to read it. No need to send me a little box so I can click the “read” button.

It should come as no surprise that I routinely refuse to accept a read receipts and I ALWAYS hit the “ignore” button.

! : Ahhh, the little red exclamation point. This little innocous mark ellicits several responses from me. The most common being: Hmm, really? That’s not important at all, I’m not sure why YOU thought it was.

Sometimes I just laugh, sometimes I roll my eyes. Maybe, just maybe 0.0000012% of the emails that I receive that are tagged with a red ! actually are important. If that’s the case, I will add my own little red flag and deal with them as soon as I can.

My general philosophy in dealing with the little red ! is this: If your message isn’t as important as you think it is, I’m not going to respond in a timely fashion, and quite frankly, you should consider yourself damn lucky if I bother to respond at all.

The little red ! is definitely over-used and abused and as far as I’m concerned is just another little boy crying wolf.

Meeting Requests: I actually really like meeting requests. It should come as no surprise that I live by my calendar, so if I can click a single button to make an appointment appear, I’m all for that. I also send meeting requests quite frequently, because I can see when they get accepted and then I know that they show up on the other person’s calendar.

These are so much better than sending a million emails back and forth trying to organzie a conference call or work day.

Out of Office Reply: This is probably my most favorite feature ever, since it means I am off and I don’t have to deal with anything that comes in my inbox until I officially return to work. I am a 2 phone person and I am a strong believer in separating my personal time from my work time. I turn my Blackberry off at 5PM every day and when I turn it off on Friday, it doesn’t get turned on again until Monday morning. I don’t even take it on vacations with me. In my line of work, an immediate response to something is almost never required, so I don’t feel the least bit guilty about not being super connected to my work phone.

I will say this: if you have an out of office reply turned on, make sure it’s for the applicable dates and you have it set up to turn off automatically, or you turn it off as soon as you come back. Getting an email with an ‘out of office’ reply that is a month old just looks tacky.

Sarcasm Font: I SO wish this was a thing. Seriously. Someone should get on that.

I’ll bake you cookies.

What do you love/hate about business email?

I'm Ready for my Close up...

If you know me at all, or follow me on Twitter, then you recognize that cute little furball as Harvey, the most adorable bunny on the planet.

Harvey might be a bit spoiled, but he is such a good bunny most of the time that I don’t mind spoiling him one bit.

Harvey also doesn’t seem to mind that I usually always have a camera in his face or am encouraging him to do that “super cute thing he just did” again and again and again so I can get just the right picture of it.

It doesn’t seem to matter how many hundreds of photos that I take of him, I can never really seem to get what I would consider to be a perfect picture. It is very possible that in the near future I may bite the bullet and plunk down some serious change on a DSLR camera *just* to get better Harvey pictures. Yeah, he might be a little spoiled…

Anyway, my friend Michelle recently started her own photography business. She claims to specialize in children, but as you can see, she also does a pretty awesome job with bunnies. All pictures in this post were taken by Michelle and Harvey was quite cooperative for her.

Yes, I did in fact have a professional photo shoot for my bunny. Judge all you want, but it was worth it and I would probably do it again. Michelle did insist on taking some human shots as well. I had to warn her that I absolutely HATE having my picture taken. Not as much as I hate the color pink or being hugged, but willingly getting in front of a camera is definitely in my top 5 list of things I absolutely despise. Squirrels and stupid people round out the list.

 That is probably one of the only pics you’ll see of me on the internet. I rarely post my own image anywhere on the web and when anyone even looks at me while holding a camera, my favorite line is ” I DO NOT authorize the use of my image”. I do make exceptions here and there but they are few and far between.

The moral of the story is, if you want some awesome pictures taken of either humans or animals, then call Michelle and schedule a session with her.

In the meantime, here are some more adorable bunny pictures.

 

 

(Somewhat) Wordless Wednesday

We had an incident the other night. Everyone is fine, the alarm company responded extremely quickly.

Thankfully they didn’t send the fire trucks, because that would have been REALLY embarrassing.

The turkey bacon was the only casualty.

Makeup Monday - Birchbox

You probably wouldn’t be shocked to learn that in addition to an unnecessary amount of shoes and handbags, I also own a lot of makeup.  Odd, because I don’t wear a lot of makeup. I mean, I wear makeup at least 4 days a week, rarely on the weekends, but even when I do wear it, I don’t wear a lot of it. I NEVER wear foundation and I prefer the natural ‘is she or isn’t she wearing makeup’ look.

HOWEVER, I love makeup. LOVE IT. I love the colors, shades, textures, new products. I love everything about it. If I think a product will do a fraction of what it claims to do, I will buy it. This is particularly true of concealers and mascara.

Although, with respect to mascara, recently I have found the BEST MASCARA EVER, so I don’t buy anything else these days.

Due to my makeup obsession, I am of course a VIP Beauty Insider at Sephora and 95% of my makeup buying happens there. Usually online, because it’s just easier and you get more samples that way. Plus, free shipping on orders over $50- which, let’s face it, is super easy to do when buying makeup.

Also, Sephora gives their members birthday presents every year. This year’s present looks pretty neat and I should be able to claim it soon.

All of this makeup talk brings me to the reason behind this post. For the past few months, I have been subscribing to birchbox, which is a service that mails you 5 deluxe beauty samples every month for $10. Basically it’s a makeup subscription service.

You can choose to then buy the full size items and Birchbox will also offer you free shipping on orders over $50. They also periodically send you coupons and additional free stuff as well.

To get started, you fill out a beauty profile, which you can change and update at any time and then your samples are hand picked for you every month. For instance, several of my friends also subscribe, but our boxes are slightly different every month. That comes in handy if you want to trade products or colors for any of the items.

I’ve been a subscriber for at least 6 months now and I have found a number of products that I loved and would buy in the future. I still find myself running to Sephora to buy the full size items, since they seem to carry almost all of the same brands, but I love my birchbox service and it’s a cheap, easy way to try out a bunch of new things you may not have discovered on your own.

If you want to try out Birchbox for yourself, use my invite link.

Sinfully Delicious

I was going to lump this company into a post about awesome Pittsburgh small businesses, but after the spectacular customer service I received today I wanted to give them a shout out all on their own.

I first became aware of Sinful Sweets when Danielle from Tupelo Honey Teas was doing an event there. I discovered that their dark chocolate didn’t contain any dairy and it tasted amazing!

Not only do they make awesome chocolate, but they will also custom make just about anything that you want. I told Christopher that I loved dark chocolate and peanut butter together. He said that I could call or email at any time and he would make me whatever goodies I desired.

Sidenote: I wonder if a dark chocolate covered Alex O’Laughlin could be ordered…

Now I don’t celebrate Valentine’s Day at all, but while I was working today I thought that some chocolate would really hit the spot. I happened to be in Lawrenceville, so I figured I would hop on over to the candy place and see what they had.

Sadly, they were out of every dark chocolate/peanut butter combo that they would normally carry. I shouldn’t have been too surprised, it was valentine’s day after all. Much to my surprise (and absolute delight) the owner offered to make me something right on the spot. He concocted some dark chocolate peanut butter cups and about 10 minutes later I had my goodies and was on my way. Those 10 minutes were a bright spot in an otherwise gloomy day. He also said that I was the first person to get their dark chocolate peanut butter cups. I guess they are usually only made in the milk chocolate variety.

Christopher was totally awesome today and took customer service to a whole different level. I never would have asked him to make me something on the spot, but his willingness to make me happy and cater to my dairy allergy was simply amazing. I will visit his shop on a regular basis and I’ll send everyone I know there as well.

It’s people like Christopher and small businesses like Sinful Sweets that keep my love affair with Pittsburgh alive.

What small businesses do you gush about?