Moncton — Local office worker Heather LeBlanc is being hailed as a genius by her peers for accomplishing a feat no other Atlantic Canadian has ever done: reading her work emails and answering every single question contained within them, in complete sentences.
“Most people just skim the email, choose the easiest question in it, and reply only to that, several days or weeks later, if at all,” said LeBlanc, “but I make a point of answering every last question in the email with precision and clarity. And I never use one-word answers. It’s not that hard.”
But it seems it is that hard, because LeBlanc is the only one doing it.
“I’ve never seen anything like it. She doesn’t even send that passive-aggressive phrase ‘As per my last email…’ when someone else doesn’t answer her questions,” said co-worker Patricia Henderson. “And she doesn’t CC people who shouldn’t be part of the conversation, and she answers her emails the very same day she gets them!”
We emailed LeBlanc’s boss, Donald Brown, to ask him a few questions about his stellar employee. Unfortunately, of the six straightforward questions we sent him, Brown only managed to answer one, which was, “Would you have time to answer a few questions about your employee, Heather LeBlanc?”
“Swamped right now. Will revisit later. Cheers,” wrote Brown.
LeBlanc said she tries to avoid the most obnoxious email faux pas, such as implying that you’re too busy and that your time is more valuable than the other party’s, by answering their thoughtful email with a “sure” or a “sounds good.”
“Oh god, everyone does that. Instead of reading through the email and just answering it, they reply to the email saying they’re too ‘snowed under’ to answer your questions. It’s pretty douchey.”
LeBlanc said that often people will spend more time explaining why they’re busy than the time it would have taken to just answer the email’s questions.
“Another thing they do is partially glance at the email, then call you to get you to explain the simple thing you already wrote out. Just read it!
“Or they’ll email you, and immediately call you afterward to chat about what they literally just sent you. God, so annoying.”
Another co-worker, Andrew Davis, lauded LeBlanc for never including meaningless office jargon like “Let’s circle back to this” or “I thought I’d reach out.”
“She just speaks in plain English, and she never says she’s included an attachment and then just forgets to attach the file. She’s truly an inspiration to us all.”