Ever send someone an email and get a canned reply saying they aren’t there? I receive these quite often, but I don’t understand why the response time is so inconsistent. Presumably, you configure your email program to send the response automatically whenever an email comes in during the period you’re out. If the whole thing is controlled by a computer, why does it take hours — or even days — to receive the automated reply? I know email isn’t an instant medium, but it’s pretty lame to have to wait five hours to learn the recipient is on vacation.

Even better, scrap this auto-reply nonsense and take a proactive approach. Figure out the people you communicate with the most by email, and send them a brief note saying that you’ll be out. It’s also polite to tell them who they can contact for help in your absence. I’ve been doing this for about a year, and it’s quite effective.

Here are some of the dumbest places that a manufacturer or repair center can place a sticker:

– Directly on the screen, so they can spoil the elegant user interface by making you view it through a layer of sticky residue.

– Right on the battery cover or access door and stretching onto the neighboring panel, so you’re forced to tear the sticker to get the compartment open. (For some reason, this always makes it even harder to get the two halves of the sticker off later.)

– On any sort of cord or cable. Ask anyone who has tried to remove a sticker from a power cord, and they’ll tell you that the glue is there to stay, picking up floor dust for the life of your device.

If you need to put permanent stickers on things, make sure they aren’t obnoxious, and label them with “Do not remove” so customers don’t waste time trying to remove them. In all other cases, make sure the sticker comes off easily, or just omit it altogether.

Whenever I talk to someone who has only been speaking English for a few years, I’m pleasantly surprised at how clearly they communicate. Sure, they’re often self-conscious about their speech, but their limited knowledge of fancy words and sentence structure tends to make them very easy to understand. I think this phenomenon has useful implications for native speakers, as well.

One approach is to “talk more like someone who just learned the language.” In other words, avoid overly complex sentence construction and cut out obscure words. Another method is to always assume you’re addressing an audience that is new to the language. Think about which words or expressions or structures might get them confused, and try to write or speak without relying on those elements.

Either of these approaches should improve the comprehension and effectiveness of your message, even when the audience is primarily made up of native speakers. As those new to the language have taught us, focusing on clarity is always a good thing.

It’s nice that many companies have created programs to benefit non-profits, such as matching the donations made by their employees or holding events where the proceeds go to charity. But sometimes the fundraising tactics can get out of hand. Here’s a few signs that you’ve gone too far:

– You added a line to your email signature asking customers and vendors for money.
– Each person you work with has been contacted by three or more of your staff members, all asking for money for the same cause.
– You have your secretary calling people twice a week until they agree to make a donation.

And my personal favorite:

– You haven’t updated your list to exclude targets who are very unlikely to donate. For example, you’re still asking for money from companies you don’t even work with anymore, or people you haven’t talked to in years.

If this sounds like how your company raises money for charity, I only have one thing to say: what you’re doing isn’t fundraising. It’s panhandling. And unless you want to be associated with that sort of behavior, you should probably adopt a more subtle approach to asking for contributions.

On the average, I would say that writing a truly clear document takes 2-4 times as long as making a mediocre one. In other words, the difference between “good enough” and “really great” is 100% to 300% more time invested. Is it worth it? I think so. But when I think about the crap that most organizations put on their websites and other public-facing channels, it’s pretty obvious that very few people feel this way.

The way I see it, the dominant approach is to just get something written as quickly as possible. Then, publish it right then and there, without any sort of double-checking or review by a colleague. This leads to senseless and confusing garbage that confuses the hell out of readers. Who cares, the writers think, it’s good enough and we can fix it later. Of course, later never arrives. At best, the crappy document gets replaced by an equally crappy, albeit newer, version.

Maybe I’m crazy, but I think producing sloppy work hurts everyone in the long run. If that’s your company’s approach, you’ll probably find yourself explaining things over and over again — for sales, tech support, and every other area — since nothing you’re providing is clear. That initial shortcut will keep costing you money month after month, year after year. Of course, maybe these companies don’t care. The people managing the website or writing the user guide never have to answer sales calls or talk to customers. But the costs are still very real. To me, if you don’t have time to write something clear, concise, and useful to your audience, do everyone a favor: find the time to do it right, or don’t bother in the first place.

I write a lot of blog posts on my BlackBerry, which works out pretty well. WordPress provides a mobile site with the basic posting features, although you can’t do stuff like edit old posts or retrieve a draft. Given the limited intent of the mobile version, that’s fine with me. But one thing drives me crazy: if you get a network error when saving the post, there’s no way to tell if it got saved or not without leaving the WordPress mobile site, and potentially losing your work. As a result, I’ve sometimes posted the same article twice. This got me wondering: why doesn’t WordPress screen for duplicates?

The process could be quite simple. If two posts are submitted on the same blog, on the same date, with identical titles and body text, then ignore each copy after the first one. There’s no risk of losing data, since the post has already been published. If they wanted to get fancy, WordPress could make this an option you could disable, or send the duplicates into a private queue that only the author can see from their blog control panel. But this is probably overkill, since I can’t imagine any legitimate reason for posting the same article twice in a row.

More generally, automatically checking for duplicates can save users a lot of time and hassle. E-commerce sites are a great example. Why do so many of them warn you to only press the “Place Your Order” button once? I’m sure that some people still hit it multiple times, e.g. if their Internet connection flakes out during the process. A few sites have gotten smart about this, and they replace the button with a “Please Wait” animation while the order is being sent. That way, you simply can’t press it twice. Of course, it wouldn’t hurt to have automatic duplicate screening on the backend, too, using a similar mechanism to what I’ve proposed for blog posts.

1.) “Thanks for taking the time to report this problem” (even if you already knew about it)

2.) “We’ll look into the issue and will give you a status update within two days” (so they know when to expect a response)

3.) “A few other customers told us about the problem, but it’s helpful to know you were affected too” (so they can see they’re not alone)

A friend of mine works in the TV industry. He recently applied for a job at a new station, and they said he was their top choice for the opening, with a final decision to be made in a few weeks. Each time he spoke to them prior to the decision date, they confirmed that he would be offered the job. But when the date came around, they gave the job to someone else. It turns out they interviewed another person at the last minute as a favor to one of the managers, and gave that person the job instead.

This behavior isn’t limited to employment matters. You see it all the time with vendor selections, even when the purchase is supposedly being made through a competitive bid process. In each case, it’s a huge waste of time for the parties involved, and can easily cross the boundaries of what’s ethical. Frankly, companies who create elaborate hiring and purchasing charades, only to hire the VP’s brother or choose an inexperienced company run by their next-door neighbor, should be punished for these ethical violations.

If your cousin or friend or neighbor is the best choice, fine. But don’t waste everyone else’s time to go through four rounds of interviews or complete a 50 page proposal when someone else is already a lock for the job — or a higher-up in your company plans to overrule your selection with whoever they owe a favor to. In these cases, do everyone a favor and skip the fair-competition charade. Just award the business to the party that you planned to use from the start. And when you actually do run a competitive bid process or post an opening in your firm, try to maintain some semblance of a fair and equitable selection. Otherwise, people will learn that the odds are stacked against them and stop responding to your requests entirely.