A couple of ill-advised e-mails I’ve encountered lately resulted in unnecessarily hurt feelings. Written words unintentionally causing hurt feelings aren’t anything new, of course, but the internet does allow us to be dumb faster.
I write from experience. And I am reminded that you sometimes learn important lessons in ways you didn’t expect from people you didn’t expect to learn them from.
ONE OF MY most important lessons in dealing with people came from a copy editor at the St. Petersburg Times. Copy editors were the faceless, often grouchy, souls whose job it is to read stories before they are published, trying to guard against errors of language, fact or taste. For this, they got little credit, and, when some error sneaked through, more than a fair share of blame.
Chick Ober was one of those people. Early in my career as a reporter, Chick had taken me under his wing, perhaps because I was eager to improve, and he taught me more about respect for the language than perhaps anyone.
When I got promoted to running the newspaper’s bureau in Bradenton, Florida, I didn’t go to the main office very often, and I usually didn’t see Chick when I went to St. Pete for the monthly staff meeting.
As bureau chief, I was in charge of gathering news for the edition of the newspaper that served what we called the South Suncoast. I’d assign stories (including some to myself) and pictures. We sent our stories and pictures to the main office by bus and by Teletype. Along with the stories, we sent a budget — basically a list of stories for the next day’s with recommendations on their relative importance. Most of our communication with the main office was in memos that went with the bus package.
I had a lot of freedom and responsibility. I also had a lot of pride in what we did.
Sometimes when I picked up my morning paper, I was unhappy with the way a story was played or edited. I did not keep my thoughts to myself. When I got to the office, I would write a memo the copy desk saying what I thought had been done poorly.
ONE AFTERNOON, I passed through the newsroom and Chick asked me if I had time for a cup of coffee. If Chick wanted to talk, I knew I needed to listen.
Over our coffee, he delivered a short, gentle, but terribly important lesson.
“Bill,” he said, “most of the people on the copy desk now have come since you’ve been down in Bradenton. They don’t know sweet old Bill. They just know Bill Brown from the memos they read, and they think SOB means something else.”
In earlier days, whenever he had given me a word usage lesson, he always closed with, “you might want to look it up.”
This time he said, “You might want to read some of those memos.”
When I got back to the bureau office, I opened the file slowly read some of the old memos, trying to read them as if I’d need seen them.
SOB indeed, I thought. I tried to take the lesson to heart, not sending a memo criticizing anything until it had cooled down for a while and I had re-read it as if I were the recipient. I learned that some things are best ignored and others could wait until I could have a personal conversation with the person.
I HAVE READ that Mark Twain was as good at writing outraged letters as he was at novels but that he let the letters age overnight and rarely sent them. I’ve read at least one that he did send, and it was a lulu.
With e-mails, it is temptingly easy to dash off a message without taking time to let it sit a while and re-reading it. It is even easier to click on reply and zap out a reply.
The internet is a wonderful thing; it certainly gives a note a quicker ride than the Greyhound bus did.
But it also allows us to do dumb things faster, too.
