- Work emails can be misinterpreted so I tried a tool designed to make mine seem more enthusiastic.
- Emotional Labor was created by writer Joanne McNeil in response to unemotional, repetitive emails.
- The chrome extension replaces serious words with more playful ones and adds exclamation marks.
Email divides opinion.
Despite being the preferred form of communication for many, it can be deeply inefficient. Emails can be easily misinterpreted and contribute to stress and overwork — especially when sent out of hours.
Such are the perils of work emails that people have invested vast amounts of time developing techniques and tools to improve them. One of those tools is Emotional Labor.
The tool, which can be downloaded as an extension, adds exclamation marks instead of full stops and replaces serious words with more playful and lively sentences. In short, it makes your emails more enthusiastic.
It was created by the writer Joanne McNeil, partly in reaction to her failure to adapt to using “canned responses” and general lack of emotion in emails, as she explained in a 2015 blog post.
A “canned response” is the same email written repeatedly. In the same way that a company may use the same template response when answering common customer service queries.
I’ll often reply to PR pitches or for a certain format of email, including the same themes or potential talking points. I have a habit of typing responses quickly, without really thinking about how it comes across.
I planned to spend a morning using it to jazz up my often monotonous inbox.
It was easy to use but potentially really awkward
Once the extension is installed, you type your email as normal and then click the smiley face.
When approaching a company for a piece I’m working on, I wrote:
‘Hi XXX,
How are you? I’m the UK-based Careers reporter for Insider. I’m writing a feature about Return internships.
I want to speak to companies that are offering them, about the reasons why, some of the benefits, as well as speaking to some of the people who have completed return internships.
Who is the best person to speak to at XXX about the company’s Returnship program? Do you think it would be possible to arrange an interview later this week, or early next?
best wishes
The tool changed it to:
Hey lovey! I’ve been thinking of you 🙂
‘Hi XXX,
How are you? I’m the UK-based Careers reporter for Insider!!! I’m writing a feature about Return internships!!!
I want to speak to companies that are offering them, about the reasons why, some of the benefits, as well as speaking to some of the people who have completed return internships!!!
Who is the best person to speak to at XXX about the company’s Returnship program? Do you think it would be possible to arrange an interview later this week, or early next?
I decided to just send the original text.
Doing otherwise would have been awkward, and actually quite inappropriate. I tried again this time responding to an email. I intentionally made my response quite short, to see what the tool would change.
I typed:
“Hi XXX,
Thanks for sending and for introducing XXX, the report looks good, still going through it.
Best wishes
Stephen
The tool changed it to:
“Hey lovey! I’ve been thinking of you 🙂
Hi XXX,
Thanks for sending and for introducing XXX. 🙂 the report looks good, still going through it!!!
Best wishes,
It seemed more like a satirical joke than a genuinely useful tool. That’s because it kind of is.
The extension looks fake, McNeil wrote in her blog post: “That’s the point. I wanted to reveal exhaustion, my fatigue in needing to attend to so much correspondence.”
However, it was helpful in one way. Neuroscientists have long investigated our seeming ability to miscommunicate the tone and emotion in emails.
Studies from the pandemic showed that higher levels of paranoia and miscommunication were common side effects of long-term remote work reported by staff.
With hybrid and remote working looking like a lasting impact of Covid-19, it was a good general reminder to consider how certain words or punctuation may be interpreted, or whether the email is actually needed at all.
