Pam Parish

We’ve all done it - sent a nasty email to a co-worker or friend out of frustration, anger or reaction rather than response to a situation. Not sure how many of us have ever sent an insulting email or letter to a perfect stranger, for no reason. I can say I’ve never done this and I’m still shaking my head at the one such note that came to our Graphic Designer from her personal website. Stick with the story here… it gets rather interesting.

On Thursday night, Cat got this random e-mail as a result of a perfect stranger stumbling upon her site in what looks to be a search to fill a Graphic Design position at his company:

Click the image to view it larger….

Here’s Cat holding her “special” note:

Here’s where the story gets even more interesting. Out of curiosity, Cat visited the URL from the gentleman’s email address to see what company he was with. Come to find out, it’s a company that we do business with!!! One of our vendors that our department uses to fulfill promotional item orders.

So, class - here’s your lesson for the day:

1. Everyone, be careful when you spout off to random strangers, because you’ll never know if you might actually be connected to them in some way.
2. Employees, be even more careful when your personal opinions could reflect negatively on the company that you work for and impact how the very clients that pay your paycheck feel about you. (yes, the shop that he works for will be told about this in a very nice and non confrontational way, out of grace and mercy - as an employer, I would certainly want to know if my employees were potentially damaging my reputation.)

Additionally, in defense of Cat - it’s that very creativity that she showed in not being afraid to express herself that caused me, as a potential employer, to call her in for an interview. When hiring someone in the creative arts, you want an out of the box thinker, someone who can express themselves outside of the lines - because, what I know that this guy obviously doesn’t is that if the artist can do it when they represent themselves, they’ll do it when representing me. I like out of the box - it’s why I hired her and I don’t regret the decision for one second.

OOPS - :o) it appears that in this instance, messing with the Cat landed the mouse in a trap. haha. Yes, I find myself funny.

Being careful,