using email to cover someone's butt...

[UALOneKPlus]

At my work lots of people have begun to use email as a "documentary" to CYA. Boy do I hate it!!

A lot of emails serve no purpose except to deflect blame later...

[Robotnik]

This goes on all the time in my job. What I hate about it is how I sometimes get email I've written from 1 or 2 yrs ago quoted back to me. Someone might go, but you said X, Y and Z in 2001 and forward me an old email I sent. Which is all well and good, but then I have to go into a time wasting discourse about why what I said in 2001 applied then and what has changed since then to justify why I am saying something else.

[Ian]

This is why I have email from 4 years ago still. I rarely use it, but its there in case I need it.

[UALOneKPlus]

This is why I have email from 4 years ago still. I rarely use it, but its there in case I need it.

I archive my emails into separate .pst files - eg: 2001.pst, 2002.pst...

By the way, I read with happiness this story: Firm bans e-mail at work.

Emailing these days is an art and science, and colleges should have courses about email strategies...