BE CAREFUL USING THE WORD ‘TOMORROW’ IN EMAILS.

A lot of people have still not figured out that making an appointment by email is very different from making an appointment by telephone. When you call someone on the phone, you are in direct communication with the other person. In a phone call, ‘today’ means today, and ‘tomorrow’ means tomorrow. However, when you send an email, you can’t be sure when the recipient will get it. He may get it immediately, but if his server or yours is down or screwed up, he may not get your message for hours. Haven’t you ever received an email the day after it was sent? You should get in the habit of being specific about dates in email messages. State the day of the week you are talking about. At some point, you may get yourself into trouble, like missing an important appointment, by using words like ‘tomorrow’ in an email.

When is ‘next Tuesday’? ‘Next’ is another word that gets people into trouble in emails. Suppose you get an email on Sunday, October 10 inviting you to a meeting ‘next Tuesday’. Is the sender referring to October 12 or October 19? The dictionary defines ‘next’ as ‘immediately after’, but after what? Avoid confusion. State the date.

Business etiquette.  In business schools in Europe, students are taught business etiquette and how to write business letters. That is a basic part of a business education in Europe and Japan. Here in the U.S., business schools don’t normally teach that at all. I majored in business, and the subject of business etiquette never came up. I do recall a lecture on how to write a resume, but not how to write a business letter.

The Handshake. Shaking hands has been part of business etiquette for centuries and refusing to shake somebody’s hand has always been considered an insult. Covid has changed that. If someone offers to shake my hand, I politely tell them that I don’t shake hands anymore because of Covid. No one has yet taken offense by that. Dr. Anthony Fauci said last year: “I don’t think we should ever shake hands again, to be honest with you.” Forget about bumping elbows as an alternative to a handshake or having everybody wipe their hands with hand sanitizer before or after shaking hands. If I was running an office, I would put up signs around the office stating: ‘We do not shake hands in this office due to Covid.’

CALLING ME ON THE TELEPHONE.Before I answer my phone, I always check my Caller I.D. screen first. If my Caller I.D. does not identify the caller or says that the call is from a ‘Private Caller’, ‘Unknown Name’, ‘Blocked Number’, ‘Toll Free Number’, or just the name of a city; I will not answer the call. If you are calling me from a telephone that does not identify you, just leave a voicemail message. Do not hang up and call me back later. That won’t do any good. I check my messages frequently, and I will reply to legitimate voicemail messages. I am sorry if this seems rude, but I get a lot of robocalls, and this is the only way I can control the problem. You should do the same thing that I do about this. When you answer a robocall, you are telling the computer that called you that you answer robocalls. Doing that gets you more robocalls, calls like: “Your auto warranty is about to expire” or “Congratulations! You have been selected to receive a free…….” I recently got a robocall that said that I failed to appear for jury duty and that a bench warrant for my arrest would be issued in 48 hours unless I paid a $500 fine, a fine that I could only pay with Walmart gift cards. It seems hard for me to believe that there are people gullible enough to fall for a scam this obvious, but I am told that a lot of people do.

Mark’s Job Hunting Tip #1

When making appointments, use specific dates.

‘Today’ and ‘tomorrow’ can be dangerous words in e-mails. A lot of people have missed job interviews because they used the words ‘today’ or ‘tomorrow’ ambiguously. Don’t say: “I’ll see you tomorrow at 3 o’clock.” Say: “I’ll see you tomorrow, Tuesday, June 3 at 3 o’clock.” Keep in mind that ISPs (Internet Service Providers) go down all the time. When they do, e-mails get delayed, sometimes for hours. If you send someone an e-mail at 3:00PM that says ‘I’ll see you tomorrow’, the recipient may not get your message until he comes to work the following day, in which case, you may show up a day early or a day late for your appointment. Don’t leave prospective employers (or anyone else) wondering what date you are talking about. It makes you look unprofessional. It also makes you look like someone who doesn’t pay attention to details, and worst of all, you could miss your appointment. Remember the old saying – You only get one chance to make a good first impression.

There is another problem with the words ‘today’ and ‘tomorrow.’ There are different ways of thinking about the meaning these words. For some people, ‘today’ means ‘this day’, or in other words, from sunrise to sunset. For other people, ‘today’ means sunrise to sunrise, and for other people it means midnight to midnight. A lot of people use the words ‘day’ and ‘date’ as though they thought that these words meant the same thing, but they don’t. In your mind, your day may have started when you got out of bed this morning, but you know that the date changed at midnight. ‘Today’ and ‘tomorrow’ can be ambiguous. Dates are specific. Use specific dates in all your business correspondence.

I often have this problem in my business. When I have a house for rent listed on Craigslist, I frequently get e-mails from people with questions like: “Can I see your house sometime tomorrow?” I don’t answer questions like that with ‘Yes’ or ‘No’ because I don’t know what this person has in mind by ‘sometime tomorrow’. I write back and ask: “Specifically when would you like to see the house?” You might be surprised at how frequently people are offended and get angry with me when I ask them to tell me exactly when they want to come on over and see my house. It’s strange, but this happens quite often.