It’s the start of the day and you just left your boss’ office. He gave you suggestions on how to improve your sales tactics to increase your sales. You saunter back to your desk and are deeply angered because your boss essentially told you that you are not selling enough products. After returning to your desk and turning on your computer, you write a heat of the moment email to your boss outlining how you feel that he has mistreated you, embarrassed you in front of your coworkers, and you call him every four letter word in the book. You are so angry that you don’t even bother rereading the email. You simply just press the “Send” button. Your angered email is now flying through cyberspace with no turning back. It’s about to hit your boss’ inbox and you have just realized what a bad idea that was. Has this ever happened to you?
Google’s email application, Gmail, has come up with a solution to this issue. After you press the “Send” button, Gmail holds onto your email for 30 seconds before it is released from your account into cyberspace. This gives the sender a 30 second window to reflect after they sent the email to decide if it was a good idea or not. If the sender realizes that it was a poor decision, they can press the “Undo” button. This feature will cancel the email from being sent down the cyberspace channels and splattering all over the inbox of the individual who was to receive the message.
As of right now, this feature is available under the Google Labs testing application. When in Gmail, a user must click on the green “Google Labs” icon at the top of the pane. From here, they can choose to “Enable” the “Undo” feature for Gmail. This is a slight alteration to the current web design of Gmail that will surely be automatically incorporate within a few months time.
I think this is a great feature to have. All too often people will write an email in the heat of the moment that rudely attacks or accuses someone of an unattractive action that they apparently committed. The unfortunate part is that most of the time, it was just a miscommunication between the two people that needs to be resolved. With the use of the internet, someone can write an email expressing all of their negative feelings and thoughts towards the other person while hiding behind a computer screen. By doing this, the writer is more likely to over exaggerate the situation, disregard the other person’s emotions and begin spiraling out of control. At times it is good to write a letter like this for personal reasons to get your anger out of your system. However, it should not be sent to the person because it is likely full of negativity and will end up being unproductive, or even causing a scenario that is even worse. Gmail has now aided with this so that people can choose to “Undo” that nasty email, which I think is a great idea. It will help the world to realize that not all emails should be sent in the heat of the moment.