Somebody just sent me a nasty and vile email. What should I do?
"The worst thing about a rude message is the author presuming you’ll respond to a complaint or request when his communication lacks any hint of civility."
From this blog post about email etiquette, published by JMD Financial Partners LLC.
Reply or Don't Reply
First of all, there is no need to reply to each and every email you receive.
Should you want to reply, it need not be sent right away. We recommend never replying to an email when you are angry.
We suggest creating "boilerplate" replies (form letter), so you can easily reply with a cool, calm, collected, and neutral message when you need it. The blog post linked above also suggests using a Text Expansion Utility to quickly insert your boilerplate responses. This limits your time commitment thereby reducing your emotional investment.
Remove that person from your List
You do want to get this person off your List, and make sure they do not get back on.
Step One - Remove the Subscriber
For instructions, please refer to this post.
Step Two - Add to Reject List
By adding this Subscriber to your Reject List, any electronic requests from them to be added will be ignored.
For instructions, please refer to this post.
Move on
More from the Email Etiquette blog post by JMD Financial Partners LLC:
Move On to the Next Task
People tend to mull over issues even after they’ve dealt with them. But there’s nothing you can do about a person who chooses to send a rude email. Spare yourself the frustration by issuing your response to the offending message and then moving on to another message or work task. You have more important issues to deal with and more gracious people to help.
Still having problems?
If for some reason you continue to have problems with this person, please be sure to let us know.
Email us at [email protected].