Ccs and Bccs

There was an interesting conversation that I happened to be a part of, at the Bangalore advertising awards evening the other night. (For some reason, this line sounds elitist....I like blogging!). This revolved around the utility of the ubiquitous ccs and bccs in mail after mail that we receive everyday.
With the awards, named, funnily enough, the "Big Bang Awards", it came as no surprise that oldies in the gathering were holding forth on how the quality of advertising creatives and therefore the quality of awards, were much better during their “times”.
Around some point of time in the evening, the cc/bcc story came up as just another normal topic to be bitched about, which is so typical of such a jamboree.
One of the guys began by saying that a vendor, who had written to him with a request on some job, had marked a cc to his boss on the same mail. It irritated this guy so much that he ‘replied all’ saying that he would not be considering this particular vendor’s request since he had exceeded his limits by marking a cc to his boss. My focus, till that point of time, largely restricted to a few other important ‘subjects’ floating around, shifted to this topic immediately. My reaction was that this was a very fine thing to do, given the fact that I was in pretty much a similar situation that evening and was still working on a fitting, yet professional reply.
Now, there is my answer, I thought to myself. I received a mail from a media professional earlier in the evening, about a particular advertising proposal, addressed to me, with a copy marked to my reporting boss. While subtly hinting that he knew my boss, this idiot was also trying to arm-twist me into reading a mail that I had very little concern for. Since the mail was ‘ccd’ to him, the probability of my boss asking me about my take on the proposal, however insignificant the sender might be, at some point of time in the future, was extremely high. After all, the boss also has to act like he goes through every mail, isn’t it? He can ask me what I think of the proposal and for all I know, he’s only seen the subject line in the mail. I don’t have those liberties you see.
But what this conversation also did was to highlight how much of an ego issue this cc/bcc thing can be in most cases and also laid bare the tremendous destructive potential that lies in that simple option.

I, for one, get irritated when my agency guys mark my boss on a job that calls for my approval, This is typically done just to ensure that I give them a favourable reply. The last time that happened, I made it clear to everybody concerned, including my boss, through a "reply all' mail, that if somebody is under the impression that their work would get done by marking superiors on such mails, they are definitey wrong. On the other hand, I made it clear in that mail, that if copies were marked to my boss, then I would definitely not even consider whatever there was in that mail.

Come to think of it, Ccs and Bccs can become potential causes of rifts and divisions within organizations, if they are not handled properly. For example, all I have to do tomorrow to create a rift between two of my reporting bosses (not that I want to... this is my alter-ego writing) is to mark one guy on a cc instead of directly, on a matter that concerns both equally and lo and behold..office politics :). I might get shouted at by one, but I am sure that my higher order objective of creating a rift will definitely be achieved. Going by the size of some of the egos floating around in office, it is not too difficult to imagine.

Damn these Ccs and Bccs! They rock!