At a departmental meeting last week, our new member of middle management [cuz we really needed a new layer of middle management] explained her drive to reduce the number of e-mails sent. The key point of her e-mail policy was: "don't e-mail people - go and speak to them".

Er, why? Why interrupt whatever they're doing and demand they speak to you now? Surely e-mail allows them to deal with your request when it is convenient for them?

A welcome suggestion was that group e-mails are to be avoided - they clog up the mail server and are usually irrelevant to the majority of the recipients. This is true - I am tired of receiving **All user** e-mails from total strangers saying "I'm leaving the comapny today. Plase jion me for a few bears at the pubb."

Another of her suggestions was that one should not send attachments, but should put them on the intranet and send people a link to it. Sounds like a lot of extra work to me. And obviously to her - after the meeting she sent a group e-mail to everybody in the department with a 1Mb attachment explaining her policy. D-oh!