The company I work for provides me with a car. It's up for replacement next month and for the past few weeks I've been exchanging e-mails with my Managing Director (who incidentally is leaving us tomorrow, the bastard) and the guy who I'm guessing has the job title of Group Fleet Manager or something, in a drawn out and almost balletic negotiation by e-mail of cars, specs, colours, sat nav etc. Most of the emails in this exchange carried the subject title of 'Car' or "RE: My Car'. I thought nothing of this. It is perfectly reasonable, to me anyway, that such a title is appropriate in describing the message contained within. However, today it occurred to me that this poor fleet manager guy's inbox is probably chock full of e-mails from different people and that most of those e-mails likely have exactly the same title. How's that for a daily fix of knowing exactly where you fit in to an organisation?
Our inboxes are a constant visual reminder of how interesting and varied a job we have, and of how important we are in the pecking order. Is there a liberal seasoning of e-mails in your inbox with the impressive subjects like "I need your signoff on this merger", "Minutes of the group strategy meeting" and "Conference call to Hong Kong today" or is your inbox predominantly a home to the likes of "Please complete your timesheets by 4pm today", " Who left 10 pence in the coffee machine?" or "RE: My car" ?
Also, if you use separate systems for your company e-mail and your personal e-mail does your personal inbox content reveal a startling other you that your staid old company inbox would barely recognise? Your after hours predilections for Puerto Rican cross dressing, the works of Rageboy or pretending to be a 18 year old blonde nympho who goes by the name of Lula when in fact you're really a 280 pound bald male who is known in his small circle of friends as Weird Bob?
Inbox profiling. The future measurement of choice for dating agencies, career consultants and psychotherapists. You just watch.