We all get attachments from vendors via email: proposals, MSAs, SOWs, NDAs, Ammendments, Contracts, etc. Some people leave these attached to their email– trusting that the email server won’t go boots up. Some people download attachments to their desktop, which soon fills up the entire screen (unless you can arrange them in a nice pattern). The real type-a nutjobs create a separate folder for each set, which we all know we should do, but we’re too busy to spend the 15 seconds.
I fall in the second category– everything goes onto my desktop until I clean it up every Friday afternoon. The problem I have is that it requires me to open each file and read the first paragraph to know which vendor sent me the doc. Why? BECAUSE EVERYONE ALWAYS SENDS ATTACHMENTS WITH REDUNDANT OR NON-DESCRIPTIVE TITLES, DAMMIT. I work at Brown Shoe. I know that, the vendor knows that. Why, for hell’s sake, does the vendor from Google or Akamai or Accenture or IBM or Pete’s Bait Shop always send me a document titled “brown shoe.doc”? It doesn’t tell me anything, other than to remind me where I work (Thanks, genius!). I know why: because on their file system inside Salesforce or whatever, they have organized things nice and tidy, they have a doc for Brown Shoe, for GM, for Budweiser, and for the Department of Corrections (”doc.doc”). They’re not thinking about me, the customer. They’re only worried about brownie points for cleanliness inside their own sales department.
Please, please, please: if you’re going to send me something, title it well: “Akamai 2008 Proposal.doc”, “Google NDA.doc”, “PetesBait Price List.xls”.
I won’t even get started on the fact that these should be coming over in an ODF-compliant format…