This morning I started my day with at least 50 emails from an email list that I have been meaning to remove myself from, but haven't gotten around to it yet. At least 40 of the emails were from other people pleading to be removed from the list. Thankfully, I only had to go through 3 out of 50 of these emails before I found one hinting at the removal method we needed to go through. It wasn't by a well-meaning, helpful soul, it was by a bloody rude, spelling-challenged individual who had 3 paragraphs of venting before he gave the hint (no, not the instructions, just a hint of where to find the instructions to remove ourselves from this email hell).
The irony of it all is that the email list was one run by the Society for Technical Communications (STC). All these people are supposed to be communications experts and the one simple explanation of how to remove yourself from the email list was not “simple” it did not, in effect, “communicate”. And the one email that I found, that only hinted at the process, was bloody rude about it!
Why do email lists exist at all? Why have we all signed up for these in-box bombing lists, invariably regretting it, but not being bothered enough to find out how to remove ourselves from them?
Most of the lists I'm regrettably attached to are run by Lyris. Why does the Lyris mail manager exist? The Lyris company is a Marketing company! Of course the instructions on how to remove yourself from the lists are murky and badly worded, they don't want to stop bothering you, it's their business! The process of removal has instructions that would top a “world's worst use of English” list. The instructions were written by a technical communicator, but they just don't want to communicate the process of leaving their list! They want to annoy you forever!
Join an email list? NEVER AGAIN!
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