If I Do Reply, You Know the Email's Starting With "Howdy, Y'all!"

One of the things I get to do in my new job is investigate free online resources that librarians want to add to our database to make sure that they're really free with no strings attached. Our legal department requires us to get an official statement from the people behind the resource stating that there's no license agreement involved, so I get to use a very formal form letter (complete with "Dear Sir or Madam") to request these statements, since we have to document everything we do in the process. This morning, I got a response from one such provider which at first blush seemed very polite . . . until I scrolled down and realized that I had originally sent the form letter to a different person, and he had forwarded it to the person who responded to me. And, when she responded to me, she neglected to delete the comments he had made about my request:

Give me a break! And 'Dear Sir' to boot!

I want to email him back soooooooooooooooooooo much.

"Dear Sir: I apologize profusely if my attempts to maintain a civil and professional manner caused you distress; it is obvious from your response that such behavior is against your belief system."

Zinger feels that this approach is too confrontational, and yet somehow I doubt that his suggestion of asking the individual in question to perform improbable physical acts upon himself would go over much better.

At the least I wanted to email the polite lady and caution her to be more careful with forwards in the future, but my boss has suggested I drop the whole thing, so drop it I shall. And I shall look on the bright side; if I hadn't gotten this marginally insulting email this morning, I would have had nothing to blog about.

So, Give Me a Break Guy, I thank you, and my blog monkeys thank you.