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Imagine if you will...

I've posted this on my blog. You, loyal reader, have come upon it by way of my Twitter feed, or your RSS reader, or an email someone sent you (Subject: Who Gave This Girl a Blog?!?!) with a link. In any case, you read over what I've written. And then you click your Farmville bookmark to navigate away, and this pops up...

Aw HELL no!

I bet you'd feel pretty insulted wouldn't you? Because "Kimberly Welsh has requested a read receipt..." is really code for "Kimberly Welsh doesn't trust you as far as she can throw you, and in order to stop you in your lying, cheating, stealing tracks, she wants you to acknowledge HERE AND NOW that you have read this blog post, so when she hounds you about it later, you can't get away with claiming you didn't see it! You big fat lying LIAR!"

I hate read receipts. They are the nasty nose-picking tattle-tales of the virtual playground. Seriously, if we're gonna be this immature, why not also add cooties to anti-virus searches? Because the sender is not sitting at their desk, staring intently at their screen, waiting eagerly to see that you have read their email. That read receipt is just gonna sit in a folder marked "Ammo I Can Use To Pressure, Annoy and Pester People" unless/until they feel compelled to use it as Exhibit A when you go on trial for failing to forward their chain letter to 35 people in the time allotted.

I know all too well that there are people in just about every workplace who blow off their responsibilities. But I don't believe that chasing them around with a piece of paper that says "Jim Bob read this email at 10:15am on September 3rd" is going to motivate them to change their evil ways. Meanwhile, when you attach a read receipt to every email you send, you are accusing literally ALL of your contacts of being lazy immature children who cannot be trusted to do their jobs. Every time you send a read receipt from now on, imagine that this is what comes up on the other person's screen:

(Substantially less headache-inducing when zoomed. Just a suggestion.)

Maybe then you will think twice.