The wenchy email (because sometimes, you just have to)

Nothing maddens me more than when in the course of mildly heated back-and-forth cyber convo, a co-worker decides to up the ante and elevate the issue by copying their boss, their boss' boss, your boss, and your boss' boss with their next reply. To me this says "you obviously are wrong, you can't handle this decision, I need to get someone involved who can actually do something about my problem." In short, "Booyah." It's the ultimate burn. And so I felt like it was somewhat of a low blow when I found myself stooping to that level this morning and sending a "Booyah" reply of my own.

My job is half marketing and half operations, and this presents an almost daily challenge, in that the metrics for these two departments conflict completely. I work with marketing to bring customers more products in more locations, and I work with operations to simplify and take as much cost as possible out of the network. See? It can be tough. Because when push comes to shove, who wins? I can't count the number of times I've told a product manager, "Give me the volume and I'll give you this new program," and they in turn have replied, "Give me this new program and I'll give you the volume." I agree it's probably operations' job to end this viscous chicken and egg cycle, which is why I frequently allow these new programs...under the condition that if they become too costly, they will be swiftly removed.

Today's request was for a brand new product that has no business. While I might typically be persuaded to eventually say yes, the kicker here is that the new piece of business sales has secured would leave us scrapping 17% of the material. For those who may not sense the stupidity of this request, 17% is a HUGE amount of product to scrap. When I explained this and still heard from both the product manager and the marketing director that we really need to take the risk and put the program out there (much easier for them to say, as scrap costs go against operations, not marketing), I decided to play the "start copying some bosses" card. I explained that walking into 17% scrap is not taking risk, it is simply bad business. Booyah.

I wouldn't really consider it a victory, as I did a fair amount of agonizing over the sending of this email. That's the funny thing. I can craft a very well-written and to-the-point message that is firm enough to flirt with the edge of being mean. But I'm NOT actually a mean person. Not even a little. So sometimes I wonder if I'm tough enough for my own mouth! When I was in Toronto earlier this year, I met a few salesreps I had previously only interacted with via email. They commented (while slightly intoxicated) that they had expected, based on my emails, that I would be mean and were surprised that I wasn't. Ha! Little does anyone know I'm soft as angel cake.