Email Pet Peeves, part two

Yesterday I wrote about one of my pet peeves when it comes to email. But as I re-read the post later, it occurred to me that the pet peeve I wrote about is not the ONLY pet peeve I have when it comes to email, and it's not even the worst one I have. Here are some others:

1. Fancy backgrounds: When I open an email, I want to read the text of the email. I do NOT want to see a bunch of puppies dancing around or a bright pink background with pretty green hearts. And what makes this matter worse, when I go to forward the email the background wants to forward itself right along with it, and I have to go into the settings of the email and change it from HTML or RTF to text and then back again to make the background go away. Otherwise, the person receiving the forwarded message from me might think that I am the one using the cutesie background.
2. People who write in all caps. I think pretty much everyone is irritated by this, right? So maybe this one isn't a pet peeve. AFTER ALL, I THINK A PET PEEVE PRETTY MUCH HAS TO BE SOMETHING THAT IRRITATES YOU more THAN THE AVERAGE PERSON, and since no one likes to read writing in all caps, maybe I should remove this from the list...Nah.
3. People who send LLLLLOOOOOONNNNNGGGGGG emails. This is actually a bad habit that I had myself until just a few years ago. In the name of being thorough, I used to send very long emails, sometimes divided into sections with hyperlinks to jump from section to section and back to the beginning. I was very proud of these emails. And then one day I was talking to a teacher who--back when I was a classroom teacher--had taught right next door to me. He asked me a question about a new email system that we were installing, and I told him that I'd put it in my last email to district staff, and hadn't he read it. "Read YOUR emails?" he said to me. "No way! They're too long. I just delete 'em as soon as they come in!" This wasn't friendly ribbing from a co-worker, either. I could tell by his tone that he was serious. And after he said that, I started analyzing my own email reading habits, and darned if he wasn't right. If an email is more than, say, the length of the screen, I probably won't read it when I first get it. I'll scan it and save it for later. If it's more than two or three times the length of the screen, I probably NEVER read that saved email. I just end up deleting it. And if it's any longer than that, I don't even bother saving it. I just delete it as soon as I open it.
4. Spammers who try to fool me into reading their messages. I really hate all spam. Who doesn't? But I REALLY get upset when I get an email with a name like "Cindy" on it and some kind of subject that sounds like it could be legitimate. "Re: Hi" doesn't fool me any more. Neither does "Funny Joke" or anything like that. But "Missed Your Call" or "Returning Your Defective Item" sound like they could be legitimate emails, and I'll open them up. And when the text of the email says something like "Find an Adult Friend to Spend the Evening With...Tonight!" I get really upset. Especially if I open the email on my cell phone, which takes several seconds to open each message as it has to go out to the server and retrieve it. I look at it and think, I wasted ten seconds of my life waiting for this?!"
5. People who forward jokes, sappy stories, or other chain letters. Of all of these, I think I hate the Christian messages the most, because I'm a Christian, and because I understand that these chain emails were not written by well meaning Christians, but were instead written by ill-meaning people who have co-opted Christianity in order to clog up people's inboxes. "If you send this email to 12 people then you will be blessed by God" the messages say. Really? Why 12 people? What if I only sent it to 11? Am I damned to hell at that point?

Holy Cow! I was going to keep writing this post. I actually had about four other pet peeves on the top of my head. But I just realized--do you know who I sound like in this post?

That's going to give me nightmares for weeks!