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KSL Nightside's Chelsea Hedquist reportingEvery day millions of people send off what they think are completely innocent emails to their coworkers. And every day someone else seems to take offense to what they read.
"I've gotten myself into trouble or I've taken messages the wrong way," says Lindsey Christensen, who works from home and emails her colleagues throughout the day.
the workplace cyber world can prove tricky to navigate, as Christensen has found with her current boss.
"Sometimes she's fired these emails at me and I think, 'Oh my gosh, is she mad?'" she says.
People in offices everywhere have email horror stories, and it's not surprising. University of Chicago professor Nicholas Epley and NYU professor Justin Kruger studied the way people interpret email communication.
"There's a big difference in the actual ability to communicate sarcasm versus sincerity between email and voice," says Epley.
People in the study on the receiving end of emails only interpreted them correctly half the time. But Epley says that didn't stop the senders from thinking their email were perfectly clear.
"Communicators believed they communicated accurately about 75 percent of the time," says Epley, "which left people over email being radically overconfident."
Such overconfidence can get you into big trouble at work. It can even result in litigation, which is why E-Policy Institute Director Nancy Flynn says it's vital to keep workplace email completely professional.
"Really you need to be so careful about making sure that your messages are business-like and you really compose yourself before you compose your message," says Flynn.
