Forward It Again
MINO had an interesting relationship with email.
Not writing it.
Receiving it.
More specifically...
remembering he'd already received it.
At first, I assumed it was technology.
It happens.
Emails get buried.
Attachments disappear into inboxes that somehow contain 2,000 unread messages.
We've all been there.
So when MINO emailed...
"Can you send me that?"
I did.
No problem.
A little while later...
another email.
"Can you send that again?"
Interesting.
Maybe Outlook had hiccuped.
Forward.
Done.
Then it happened again.
Same document.
Same request.
Different day.
By now, I had stopped wondering whether I'd already sent it.
I knew I had.
The only mystery left was how long it would take me to find the original.
Eventually, my process changed.
The first request?
I'd send the attachment.
The second?
I wouldn't.
Instead, I'd reply to MINO's newest request...
and drag and drop my entire previously sent email(s) directly.
Not the document alone. So now he has to open. Then open. And click attachment.
Of the email I'd already sent again.
It felt strangely efficient.
Why create another email...
when the first one had already done everything being asked of the second?
Somewhere along the way, my Sent Items folder stopped being a record of conversations.
It became a filing cabinet full of receipts.
Every reply quietly documented the same thing.
Sent.
Delivered.
Completed.
Or so I thought.
Because MINO had a remarkable ability to treat completed work like it had simply wandered off for a while.
The attachment hadn't changed.
The document hadn't moved.
The email hadn't expired.
Only the moment had.
To MINO, every request arrived with the confidence of a first request.
History rarely accompanied him.
Reality did.
Just... a little later.
The funny part wasn't forwarding the email.
It was watching my own process evolve around his.
Without announcing it...
without deciding it...
I had quietly started preserving evidence.
Not because I expected an argument.
There never was one.
Not because I needed to prove I'd done my job.
I already knew I had.
The evidence wasn't for conflict.
It was for continuity.
Because there was always a reasonable chance that tomorrow's request...
had already been answered yesterday.
Eventually, I noticed something.
MINO wasn't creating new work.
He was quietly interrupting work that had already been completed.
One email.
One attachment.
One interruption at a time.
Most of them only took a minute.
Some took less.
Individually...
they were almost too small to notice.
Collectively...
they became part of the job.
I don't remember every attachment.
Or every email.
Or every Friday afternoon when Teams would light up just as I was wrapping up the week.
Those details eventually blur together.
What stayed with me...
was the pattern.
The attachment wasn't missing.
His completion was.