Technology has advanced but professionals even now get caught in a whirl because the employers expect them to use official mail Ids - the inboxes of which fill up rather quickly because of the limited storage space.
Almost every other professional faces this problem where the weekdays are spent in receiving innumerous mails while the weekends get consumed in deleting the old or insignificant ones.
In professions where dealing with public or media is required, the problem poses a serious setback to working. At times, juniors have to face flak for no fault of theirs. “My boss doesn’t understand that if a few mails are bouncing back it doesn’t mean I have typed the email Ids incorrectly. It is because the recipient’s mail box is full,” shares Saurabh Dasgupta, an official with Delhi government.
“If my boss is in a bad mood and he sees bounced mails then I know I am definitely in the line of fire, whether it is my mistake or not! But the truth is that the recipient’s processor fails and doesn’t support their mail boxes,” he adds.
Most official mails have a storage capacity of approx 50 MB which is really nothing as compared to say for example Gmail, which has 10 GB as free storage limit including Trash, Inbox and Spam, etc.
Many try and manage through Labels but the task is time-consuming and sometimes tough to handle. “My official mail box is always full thanks to PR agencies which send one mail repeatedly and even after being informed that it is not possible to cover the event, the same mail is still sent again and again,” shares a harassed journalist, Piya Agarwal.
In the absence of an effective official mailing system, at times important information is also lost. Akash Banerjee, a corporate communication manager in hospitality sector shares, “Since my official id has a certain limit, I cannot send heavy files through it. So gmail or yahoo come in handy at that time. And God forbid, if somebody sends me a mail with heavy files, then the inbox gets stuck! This could take one to two days to be repaired since it becomes a server issue and I often miss out on important mails during this time.”
So, the situation does need urgent attendance. One way out is to create new ids and set all received mails in official id can be forwarded to the new Ids. This will atleast safeguard one from losing important information. Also, if a few old mails are important and need to be preserved then an anonymous id can be used to store these. Meanwhile, seek permission from your organisation to increase the storage limit of your id.
*All names have been changed on request.
