The Secretary of Transportation in Florida received three semi-important e-mails from staffers late last year, labeled “pancake,” “pancakes” and “french toast.”
Upon discovering the breakfast code, open-government advocates and taxpayer watchdogs and political opponents claimed some sort of conspiracy to evade freedom-of-information requirements and make us all unnecessarily hungry.
An investigation of sorts, conducted over breakfast with maple syrup imported from Vermont, did not uncover any wrongdoing. Those involved said the subject-line breakfast food was merely designed to get the attention of someone who received many, many e-mails.
I sort of sympathize with that. Think about your own organization. If you send the CEO an e-mail with the subject line “more resources needed,” it’s going to end up in the trash without even a click. Might as well label it “pancake” and see what happens.
That’s sort of what I do at Banker & Tradesman when I send my monthly e-mail to the publisher, asking for a raise. I’ve gone through the entire breakfast menu. It hasn’t worked, but at least I’ve received an answer most of the time – “Not in your wildest dreams.”
I really feel sorry for guys in Nigeria who actually do have a problem with a large bequest that’s all tied up in bank paperwork and who really, really needs your help, if you’d just write him a check, for which he will reward you with an even bigger check. If his subject line says anything about “Nigeria,” no one will believe him. Might as well try “pancake.”
We’ve all played the game at one time or another. There are even workshops on how to write an alluring subject line. For instance, the best way to get the e-mail attention of Gov. Deval Patrick is to compose a subject line such as “MBTA surplus grows larger.”
Of course, the typical spam subject lines are an art form. The come-ons by escort services don’t tend to work on anybody but me – I continue to be flattered by the attention. But the sex industry does have a special set of subject lines intended for readers of B&T, e.g., “Extend the Length of Your ‘Loan’ with One Simple Pill.”
Short Stories
With the younger generation text-messaging themselves into a stupor, there is a danger that in another decade, a subject line of longer than three words on an e-mail will be considered something on the order of a doctoral dissertation.
Subject-line sophistication really is a survival skill. How else can you sort out the online hookers from the girl-next-door who really thinks you’re cute? I’ve had to learn that when an e-mail is labeled “Dearest,” it’s either phone sex or a financial scam. If the subject line is “you moron,” it’s constructive criticism from a reader of this column.
With the possibility that any particular e-mail subject line is intended to entice you or seduce you or trick you or honestly communicate with you or to amuse or bemuse you, the potential emerges for what is known as the “liar’s paradox.” If a sentence from a liar says “this sentence is not true,” is it true?
My years of college teaching have made me immune to e-mails from students with subject lines offering up some variation of “the dog ate my homework.” Last semester, one of them wrote, “emergency appendectomy.” Not bad.
Left unexplained in the Florida case was how you might go about inviting the Big Cheese to breakfast, if the menu was only available as secret code. An innocent subject-line invitation for “coffee?” might actually mean the Department of Transportation was poised to privatize all the toll roads.
For those of us over the age of 55 or so, the telephone might be a solution to e-mail angst. You remember the telephone – it’s the thing that allowed you to invite someone out for pancakes without prompting an ethics investigation.
As your corporate legal department has told you time and time again, e-mails can be subpoenaed by the enemy, just like a real piece of paper. Imagine if they subpoenaed your subject lines, all full of joking references to jerks and dummies and suckers and pancakes?
Be careful, or you may be toast. French toast. Oops.
