What If Everyone Only Communicated via Email: A Corporate Horror Story

Imagine you’re on your third hour of sifting through an email chain in an effort to find specific information from 2 weeks ago — and you’re just about ready to give up. 

Not for the first time in your professional life, you find yourself frustrated by the fact there isn’t a more efficient way to share information and communicate with coworkers.

For the fun (and the horror) of it, let’s imagine you live in a world where that’s your reality, and the only means of communication is email — no phones, no internal communication software. 

Sounds scary, right?

Let’s see how that would affect your average work day.

The endless search for the Holy Email… Er, Grail 

Every morning starts the same — tons of emails. 

On average, you waste 3 or more hours every day going through your email in the hopes of clearing your inbox. Of course, it’s mostly a futile attempt — they pile in at all hours of the day. 

You even came up with a good system where you sort emails into 3 different categories: “Must Read”, “Can Wait”, and “Who Cares”. But, with your tasks piling in, you find yourself mentally sending emails into the third category a lot more than you used to.

The years of back-and-forth emailing taught you that missing crucial information due to unread emails is part of the job.

You wish it wasn’t so. As a strong advocate for transparent communication, you know your team works best when everyone is well-informed. 

So, you try your hardest not to let anything slip through your fingers.

For example, in situations like the one you’re in now (which happen practically every day), you’d just walk to a colleague’s desk and ask them for help — if they didn’t have the information you need, at least they could help you look for it. 

However, you’re currently working from home — a borderline impossible feat and a massive communication barrier, given your inability to move on with your tasks due to the fact you can’t find the email that has the details regarding the tasks in question. 

Emails everywhere — and no productivity in sight

You think the information you need is somewhere in the email chain you’re currently sifting through, as it shouldn’t be anywhere else — every project has its own chain. 

You remember that strategy seemed like a good idea when you first joined the team. In theory, it keeps communication streamlined and allows teams to have all the necessary information in one place. 

In practice, it doesn’t do much, since:

• The Search option in your email is as useless as a paper bag in a rainstorm, 
• People constantly send you separate emails, cluttering your inbox even further,
• People either unnecessarily CC you or forget to do so, thus spamming you or excluding you from important emails, and
• The follow-up emails tend to arrive with no rhyme or reason.

Normally, you’re used to this — it’s your reality. But today, you’re stuck. 

If you can’t find the information you’re looking for, you won’t be able to move on with your tasks. 

Of course, even when you do have all the information, moving down your to-do list isn’t an easy feat, given how distracted you are on any given day — mostly thanks to emails. 

Emails have always been your biggest distraction — the constant influx alone makes it hard to focus on work. Every time you hear the ping of an incoming email, your stomach drops a bit and your focus wavers. 

But, you can fight through that. A much bigger problem is the fact that emails are a massive productivity killer. Sifting through them is tedious and your least favorite — but often the most important — task. 

You can’t forgo communication, nor do you want to — you just wish it was more effective.

You’d find it funny how something that was made to increase collaboration and communication can be so debilitating — and reduce work productivity all in one swipe — if it wasn’t affecting your capability to do your job. So, instead, you just find it aggravating.

The sea of endless emails (and broken relationships)

Resigned to having to waste your entire morning on your search, you click through your tabs to open one of the more informal email chains you use for everyday communication with your teammates. 

Nothing about correspondence is easy, you think as you start typing an angry message to your work besties. Other than screaming into a pillow, venting to them is the only way for you to blow off some steam.

Sadly, you know the chances of your friends actually catching your message in a sea of their own back-and-forth emails are slim. 

You can see how many messages you missed while you were searching through the more formal email chain — a whopping 107 — and you know you’re not going to go back to read them all, so you can only assume that others will do (or, rather, not do) the same.

Sometimes, emailing feels like talking to a wall. 

You can’t help but wonder how better your relationships with your colleagues would be and how much more inter-team trust there would be if you could communicate remotely as you do in person — or at least if everyone could catch up on missed information more easily than having to set aside 2 hours to read through 107 emails. 

A security nightmare — ripe for the phishing

During your frantic search for information, you click in and out of your inbox quite a bit, frustrated by your situation. The inbox is always overflowing, so a new wave of information hits you every time you open it. 

But, in between clicks, you spot a light at the end of a tunnel — an email with an enticing subject line: “Congrats!”

It’s not what you’re currently looking for, but it sounds like it will be a nice email to read — and a good break from your soul-sucking quest for information. 

The email names you as one of the top performers in the company (something you already knew about yourself, but, hey — it’s nice to get some recognition) and speaks further about a reward trip you won!

You scroll down without much reading — already thinking about the free, no-email vacation that you’ve won — and enter your details to claim the reward.

You give yourself a little pat on the back for being so diligent when it comes to checking your email — imagine if you didn’t read this one and missed the opportunity for a free vacation!

Emails play a massive part in both your professional and personal life. To organize your communication, you went as far as having 5 different email accounts — 2 for work and 3 private ones. So missing one or, if you’re honest, a dozen emails happens quite often — you’re just happy it wasn’t this one. 

Given that one’s email represents their entire digital identity, no one is really surprised by your devotion to checking emails — still, you wish you didn’t have to rely on it so much. 

Sadly, since you don’t have an email alternative in this imaginary circle of corporate hell we conjured for you, you have to live with the good, the bad, and the ugly that comes with emails.

Can this be fixed? Is there life after email?

On your way to the kitchen to make yourself your third cup of coffee since starting your work day (which is 2 too many and your stomach will take revenge on you for it), you eye your pillow — maybe a screaming fit would help after all. 

Deciding against it, you stir (way too much) sugar into your coffee while thinking about the biggest problems you have with email — most of which reared their ugly heads this morning:

• Your world is plagued by endless waiting for email replies,
• You waste too much time on email every day,
• You waste even more time when you have to manually look for information,
• Mini panic attacks consume you every time someone hits the “Reply All” button and clogs your inbox even more, 
• Sifting through emails is a tedious task that’s often unfruitful,
• The communication in your team is stiff, disorganized, and slow, and
• That leads to your team’s performance being chaotic, poor, and glacial-paced. 

Once again, you find yourself daydreaming about a simpler solution that would make workplace chat easier and connecting with others quick and effortless.

As you sit back down in front of your computer, you see 8 new emails have arrived while you were in the kitchen, most of which are asking for updates on the tasks you can’t even begin.

The pillow calls your name, but you stay put and click through the emails, feeling the impending doom of burnout looming over you — as always. 

Out of the horror and into the light — Business communication apps

Your horror story doesn’t have a happy ending — although you eventually find the information you were looking for, the “reward” you claimed was actually a scam. 

You fell for it  — hook, line, and sinker. 

By entering your private information to “claim the reward” you actually gave an outsider access to your email and all the confidential information in it. And, remember, since you communicate exclusively via email, that essentially means you gave the attackers access to everything. 

Chances are, the attackers will sell that info to the highest bidder and you will most likely get fired for it. 

This fictional reality is bleak — but yours doesn’t have to be.

For example, if your team from the story were able to get their hands on a batch of Pumble’s BUSINESS Plan seats, they’d be able to solve your problem even if you were working from home — with one video conference. 

They could have also utilized voice calls, voice and video messages, or message mentions to resolve the issue.

Furthermore, it’s more likely you’d never find yourself having the problem to begin with, because business messaging apps like Pumble allow you to:

• Streamline communication into neat channels, groups, threads, and direct messages,
• Make communication instantaneous but still cater to asynchronous communication, 
• Offer full transparency by giving everyone free access to information, instead of creating team silos by not including everyone on an email chain, and
• Take advantage of the unlimited message history that’s part of every Pumble plan — free and paid — to search through the entire workspace for the information you initially needed and have the app list out options actually related to your search.

Emails aren’t something that we can completely eradicate from our professional lives — nor should we. But, at the end of the day, they are a closed channel of communication that doesn’t give much leeway to its users.

So, if you’re searching for the perfect solution to your company’s communication problem — and you’d like to avoid the fate described in this article — check out Pumble. 

With affordable prices and a feature-rich interface, Pumble is the ideal solution that people like you have been looking for. 

Save your team’s time and sanity and increase their productivity — give Pumble a try!