It is important to know how to write in professional settings, but in Elizabeth Wardle’s article, “Identity, Authority, and Learning to Write in New Workplaces” there was a different problem that arose. Wardle wrote about a tech employee, Alan, who quit his previous job for lack of focus on new employees, but what came next shocked me. Alan saw himself as a god in the new office and that is completely uncalled for. I can see that he would find his job important as the office ran on computers and that was his specialty but he merely keeps the place afloat. He described himself as, “'[…] high up in the computer world responsibility wise’” but the key phrase there is “computer world” (Wardle p. 292). In the actual office, he is just the tech guy.
Not only did he have a major superiority complex but he was unprofessional in his emails. It’s one thing for him to not write in a way that is professional, but he also chose not to follow the guidelines that they set for him when sending emails. Each of the listservs was meant for specific people in the office so him disregarding that and just sending emails to everyone makes clear his position with the other staff. Of course, no one would take him seriously, why would you send emails to people that have nothing to do with them? And of course no one would know he was setting up a new network, I would disregard the emails he was sending too if they had nothing to do with me.
Having your own identity is one thing, but there is a time and place for such. Alan completely misread the situation and maybe if he had at least sent emails to the correct people instead of to everyone, he could have redeemed himself, but now he is deemed unreliable.
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