15
You Know That “Recall” Option In Your Email?
Posted on 15-01-2015
You know the feeling – you’ve spent the past hour composing an email, filling everyone into the BCC, attaching the right documents, and then you hit Send. Except you then notice a spelling mistake, or there’s an “XXXXXX” where there should be a quote from your client.
Now ordinarily at this point you would have cleared your desk, formatted your PC, dropped your tacky souvenir holiday items into a box and quit your job.
BUT WAIT TECHNOLOGY TO THE RESCUE OMFG.
Someone in IT once told you that if you ever fucked up an email, you could magically pray to the Internet gods and they would disperse their minions to the corners of the earth to delete that faulty email from people’s inboxes. That magical prayer was called “Recall Message”, and looked like this:
So of course, you breathe a sigh of relief, click the button, and think that everything is right with the world.
Except, it’s not.
The ‘Recall Message’ (specifically for those who use Outlook), doesn’t work the way you think it does. The Recall Message ONLY works for internal emails, so if for example you send your coworker an email calling her a fat whore and then regret it, you can hit the Recall Message to automagically delete the email from her Inbox (if she hasn’t opened it already). Crisis averted, all is right with the world, and you can go back to being fake BFFs at work.
But for the rest of the world, i.e everyone else in your address book, this recall function doesn’t work. In fact, it makes things even more messed up because when you click the “Recall Message” button, people will get ANOTHER email from you saying that “XXXXX wants to recall the message”, which then makes us pore over your original message EVEN MORE trying to figure out why you didn’t want us to open it.
A simpler solution? Just send a new email with “Correction” or something like that in the subject. We understand email fuck-ups will happen, but if you’re one of those people who thinks that the Recall Message is the solution, well I just have one thing to say:
(Cheers Aby)
Alright. Let’s do this.
I am in no way supporting bad PR-ing but this blog post from Nick has just got it all wrong.
“Recalling” isn’t being used in an effort to delete an email from everyone’s inboxes. Anyone with a half a brain and little bit of technical know-how will know that this is pretty much impossible. What this ‘recall’ is meant to do is convey to the press that the press release that had been sent has an error and should not go out to the public.
Instead of them having to re-input ALL the email address (or using a custom email list, whatever) and having to needlessly write a message explaining why the editors should ignore the press release (we honestly don’t give a fuck), they are simply saving time and applying emergency brakes by using the convenient, one-button solution that is the ‘recall’ feature. This is called efficient working. Let’s give cut some of the good and hardworking PR some slack.
*drops mic*