Remember when I expressed annoyance about co-workers who prefer meetings to email?

Well, the only thing more annoying is people who apparently don't trust the email system at all. If they need to tell you or ask you anything, they can't stand to just send an email and wait the 5 or 10 minutes it might take to get a reply. No, their impatience is such that they have to phone you.

When I was a desktop technician, I was used to getting paged all the time because I was usually away from my computer and it might be hours between email readings. Now that I'm a developer I sit at my desk all day long with Outlook running, and if anything I'm guilty of responding to e-mails too quickly. When the phone rings, I mentally equate that with really bad news, news so bad it can't wait for email.

But apparently everything is an emergency to some folks.