People who sign emails in ridiculous, awkward, or purely idiotic ways

This was an idea floating around in my head for a while, and I didn’t quite know how to articulate it until a good friend of mine brought up a great example.  Apparently, he has a co-worker who signs his email:

Cheers,
Phil “Summer’s Eve” McCracken

The catch (and why I embellished his name a bit), is that this guy is not British, and uses the word “cheers” in his closing statements.  The guy had been on a study abroad or long vacation in the UK and, “picked it up living with the Brits,” as I can imagine him putting it.  I’m pretty sure that there’s a direct relationship between people that use colloquialisms from outside their native land and the number of their friends who have other plans the same weekends they plan all of their parties.

So, this got me thinking about other ways of signing emails that have seemed a little “off” over the years.  The first ones that come to mind are the people who use a little too much love in their emails:

Hey Johnny,

I was wondering when we might be able to take a look at that presentation for ABC Corp.  Can we set something up for Thursday?

Warm Regards,
Dave

Warm Regards? Are you trying to set “something up” for Thursday night over bellinis at the W Midtown?  Not interested, thank you.  I do not need any of your regards, especially not your warm ones.

Yo Pete,

Why don’t we grab a beer at the sports bar downstairs after work?

Sincerely Yours,
Frank

I appreciate the overture, Frank, but I’m pretty sure if the other people in the sports bar knew I said yes to an email signed “Sincerely Yours” from a dude, we’d both get our asses kicked.  Unless figure skating was on at said sports bar.

There are also simple mismatches that can be found in corporate communication:

Dear Mr. Southbottom,

I have been notified that your payment for the FaxPro 9000 is now 60 days overdue.  Please remit payment immediately so we can return your account to a paying status and resume business.  Failure to send payment in the next 30 calendar days will result in a call to the collections agency and a lien being placed on your business.  And we might shoot your pet beagle, Smooches.

Best Wishes,
Bill Lumbergh

I love being CCd on one of these “we will kidnap your children” emails and seeing something like “Best Wishes” at the end.  Is that like a mafia tactic?

But the absolute best email signatures, in my opinion, are the “stock” signatures people have automatically appended to the end of every email:

Hey Al,

Did you see the ass on the new intern?  If I wasn’t already cheating on my wife, I’d let her have me every day of the week except Thursdays because that’s when I have to take the 4 year old to tee ball practice.

- Fred

Psalm 23:  Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life: and I will dwell in the house of the Lord for ever.

or…

Patricia,

I’m sorry to have to be the one to inform you that you are being laid off, effective 5:00 pm today.  We have determined that while you do your best, your best just isn’t good enough.  Please be sure to leave the Swingline on your desk before security comes by to escort you out.  It’s been a pleasure working with you.

Oh yeah, we just got a call that your husband was attacked by a bear and didn’t make it.  And his life insurance doesn’t cover bear attacks.

Regards,
Frank

The harder you work, the luckier you get! Have a wonderful, lucky day!

The best thing to do with these pre-packaged signatures is avoid using them.

I’ll leave you with the final version of the classic email signature. I present the graphics designer vomit, and I see way too many of these on a regular basis.  If your signature is more than 16x as large as your average email, that is a bad thing.

People who are slick and suave in online situations (See: Dateline NBC)

One thing that all of this tweeting and facebook-ing and IM-ing and chatting and other ing’s has taught me is that people who are huge, huge, indescribably huge tools in real life are often total surfer motorcycle bar-fight ninja astronaut BADASSES online.

I used to work with a guy who was like this.  In real life, he looks like he’s only minutes away from saying, “Well, it’s been nice working with you, but I have to return to the Shire next month,” but online, he is one of the coolest people you’ve ever talked to.  I came to discover this because he added me to IM the day he started, and was chatting with me for a while before I met him.  When I met him, I had no clue who he was and literally didn’t make the connection between this person and the person I talked to on IM for a few weeks.  Sad, but true.  But if you think about it, do big tools talk about the same topics in their super badass second identities?  I figured not, which made me feel better because I really was sort of talking to two people.  They just happened to inhabit the same extremely strange body.

I got married young, so I never experienced online dating, but I’ve heard that this phenomenon is very typical in around match.com and the like.  Girl posts profile.  Girl meets boy.  Boy seems pretty cool.  Girl goes on a date with boy.  Boy is a complete freak.

I think this happens because in real life, you can’t copy and paste your verbal communication from a Men’s Health article written by the girl next door.  In the middle of your dinner, you can’t Google, “something funny to say after a girl compliments your glasses,” and then come back to the conversation 3 minutes later saying, “Sorry, the phone rang and I had to take it.  Damn guys at the Pentagon won’t leave me alone ever since I stole that fighter jet after performing open heart surgery on myself and Condoleezza Rice at the same time.”  These are, however, tools at your disposal when you’re chatting up some 7th grader online and earning your spot on Dateline NBC.

I don’t know if I really have any advice on this one other than to shave that 2″ long stray hair growing out of your left check and start talking to more people in real life.  Potentially seeing a mental health therapist if you’re one of those people who plays online games where people love “the real you” (who, is probably a person with a fox head, DD breasts, a lizard tail, and some sort of a weapon I’ve never heard of) isn’t a bad idea, either.

People who think that one errant keypress can break your computer and/or cause your house to explode

How many people believe that this headline is true?  It is.  Run.  No, just kidding.  Don’t run.  It’s too late – I already own your bank account.

I think that computers are great.  I think they help you in almost every way.  Want to see the best price on that toaster?  Done.  Want to take thousands of photographs and find the one you need in a near instant?  Also done.  Want to take Aretha’s hat and put it on your head?  Computers to the rescue.  Oh yeah, and I own your bank account.  Not kidding.

But there seems to be an evil side to computers, too.  Not the evil side where little Asian kids dream up viruses that are going to delete everything on your computer when you open that greeting card from yourFriendSlutPharmacy@yahoo.com, but the evil side where the computer itself just scares people.

Maybe it’s not just computers, but technology in general.  How about when you buy your parents that new coffee pot with the automatic timer and built-in grinder.  They already have the coffee pot that you plug into the wall and it makes coffee, and it took them 6 years to master that one.  Now they’re staring at this new contraption with these bells and whistles, and all they can say is, “It looks like it just has more stuff that can break.”

That’s the cop out.  People shroud their fear in cynicism.  I was eating dinner with a couple that we’re friendly with – the guy is a geek like me and the girl is very funny and very not geeky.  The guy and I start geeking out on how WordPress is cooler now, and the girl just starts making fun of us, making beepy-boop sounds like a 60’s Hollywood computer.  But this girl is a traitor to herself: she just started a blog, and she’s trying to figure out how to doctor it up and get it moving, too.  Well, she’s getting no help from me.

In another episode, my dad has this fancy remote that is said to make controlling his TV, stereo, DVD, etc. easier.  It is not.  This remote looks like you could start a car 3,000 miles away with it, and that’s exactly what must happen when you push its buttons because we’ve confirmed it doesn’t do anything to the television.

What my parents think happens to a mobile phone when they’re not looking.

This remote requires that everything electronic in the room be in a certain state (on/off/armed). If the stereo is on and the TV is off, it’ll just turn the TV on and the stereo off.  You have to re-set it all if it doesn’t work, which is something you can’t do: owning this remote has replaced touching these dark metal boxes of electronics/explosives directly. They had a guest that fussed their equipment up, and the local geek squad guy charged them $300 to set it all up again.  He probably just came in and pressed the power button.  Easiest $300 in history.

I had planned to take more time/space to really dive more deeply into how disgusted I am with tech guys, geek squad, those other rapists, but I think I’ve run out of reader stamina.  Just know that I hate these robbers because I should have thought of it first.  That’s my $300.  But there’s way more money in your bank account.  Not kidding.