:)

Seattle and I clearly have a LOT of work pet peeves, but there is one that seriously and truly makes me want to throw a fucking stapler at someone's head.

The smiley face emoticon. My eyes involuntarily rolled at the thought of it.

Here's my unsolicited piece of advice for the day:

A smiley face emoticon in IM may be OK on occasion. A smiley face emoticon in an email every once in a while...fine, I will let this one slide (no one is perfect). A smiley face emoticon after every annoying and passive aggressive comment does NOT make that comment any less annoying. So, stop it. STOP.

Part of the reason I hate this commonly used feature is due largely to this woman I work with, who I do happen to think is very smart and good at her job. She's fairly aggressive and that's something I actually like about her, BUT she can at times cross that line to pushy and overbearing, which is usually in the form of a very obvious or passive aggressive statement...immediately followed by, you guessed it, a smiley face:)

I assume she thinks this helps ease the blow of an annoying comment and let's the person feel like they're not getting the smack down - but it doesn't. Nor does it make me think any nicer thoughts about her. It's along the same vein as someone making a racist comment, but saying they're not racist. Come on. We all know that one is a facade.

So I suppose my second piece of advice would be to just lay it out on the table and don't make any apologies for it. If it's warranted, and more importantly, correct then you've got nothing to worry about.

Class dismissed.

-Signing off from San Francisco