Green Leaf Report

 A while back I went to a women’s networking event and at the beginning we were asked our names, businesses and pet peeves. I thought at the time that this was an awfully negative way to start an event, but now I clearly remember some of those women and the things that bother them, so maybe it was more effective than most ice-breakers.

One of the pet peeves that stick out most in my mind was from a colleague: she hates receiving files that don’t have the ‘print area’ set properly.  As she said, 20 or 30 people might end up printing the document, and each one needs to go in and set the print area, and it wasted more and more time.

Which brings us to my pet peeve.  I hate it when people print my emails.  I especially get confused by those people I send an email to, and they print it out and immediately ran to my office to discuss this printed out email.  Invariably, it’s a two minute discussion, and they either leave this print-out on my desk or crumple it up and throw it in my garbage.  This has happened with multiple different people, multiple times.

I’ve tried to nicely point out that I don’t need the print-out to know what I just wrote, I’ve tried to point out that often the email is still on my computer screen, and I don’t need a paper copy to review it with them.  I even have the tagline at the bottom of my email:

My thoughts going forward are that maybe I can approach it two ways:

1. Security - Try to impress upon the offender that this is a security issue for them to print my emails (often containing financial info) and that they must now go find a shredder to remove all evidence.
2. Sarcasm  - Point out that I’m offended that they would throw away any document of my creation, and ask them to now either frame or file the document.

If anyone has successfully nipped this issue in the bud, please let me know how!