Over the last weeks, I have often felt like I am simply unable to communicate effectively with anyone, especially in email. We have been trying, as I mentioned before, to arrange for a bus for our children and that has necessitated countless emails between me and people who speak all sorts of languages first and have various levels of command of English. And for some reason, email seems to exacerbate the difficulties in these exchanges and somehow starts to infect my own writing. Some messages are so flowery it's off-putting, but still I find myself writing things like "will you be needing the services of the esteemed transportation company?" and then deleting everything to write the much simpler "do you need the bus?" On the other hand, many other messages I've received are so brief they're almost insulting, and I'm sure they aren't meant to be but conversational niceties are the first things to go in cross-cultural emailing, apparently.
I've been trying to find an example of the above that would make sense to you out there in the Internets without too much backstory, but nothing has really been perfect until today. The husband asked for transportation to the airport for his business trip, a routine request that was subsequently denied, so he wrote and said he would like a copy of the new policy so he knew what to do in the future. He got the following email in response (the formatting is original, by the way):
I've been trying to find an example of the above that would make sense to you out there in the Internets without too much backstory, but nothing has really been perfect until today. The husband asked for transportation to the airport for his business trip, a routine request that was subsequently denied, so he wrote and said he would like a copy of the new policy so he knew what to do in the future. He got the following email in response (the formatting is original, by the way):
Subject: RE: Transport Request
Dear XXXXXXX,
Apologize. Please ignore the below
regret email communications with related to your transport request, kindly see
attached details against your transport request, shall be supported with our
transport accordingly.
To serve you better, you may contact the following mobile
numbers, incase required xxxx-xxxx
Best Regards,
How do I love this message? Let me count the ways! It's priceless and so typical of day-to-day interactions here, both in person and online. It's enough to make an under-untilized English major tear her hair out in dismay...not that that's happened to anyone I know or anything...ahem!
No comments:
Post a Comment