Corporatology 11: Per My Last Email

The Lowest Form of Warfare

“The bureaucracy is expanding to meet the needs of the expanding bureaucracy.”

There are no clean hands in corporate America.

Not one.

Not the person who says
“Just bubbling this up 😊”
three hours after sending the original email.

Not the person who writes
“Any updates here?”
at 8:02 AM like a Victorian child dying of scarcity.

Not the person who “forgets” attachments.

Not the person who suddenly becomes a constitutional scholar about process once accountability enters the room.

And certainly not the person who says:

“Per my last email…”

which is corporate Latin for:

You fool. You absolute buffoon. I have already spoken.

But - did he really say something so incredibly cringe, rude, and violently corporate?!

Office work is mostly Machiavellian warfare conducted through punctuation.

A period can mean:

• professionalism
• annoyance
• fury
• “I am documenting this for HR”
• or “I’m typing this while chewing ibuprofen.”

Meanwhile:

• no punctuation = passive dominance
• exclamation points = either friendliness or instability
• “Thanks.” = threat
• “Thanks!” = unstable threat
• “Thanks!!” = someone is crying in a bathroom stall

And then there’s Slack.
I love Slack, but there's a brimming chaos in it.
Why so many channels, kind sir?

Slack was allegedly created for communication, but in practice it became:

• a panic simulator
• an attention fragmentation machine
• and a place where “quick question” destroys entire afternoons.

Nothing raises human cortisol faster than:
“hey”
from your boss.

No context.
No follow-up.
Just “hey.”

Now you’re evaluating your entire existence.

Did I forget a meeting?
Did I accidentally expense mozzarella sticks?
Am I being fired?
Did I commit cybercrime unknowingly?

Three minutes later:

“Do you happen to have the PDF from March?”

Bruh.

We used to build cathedrals.

And let’s discuss calendar warfare.

Some people send meetings because collaboration is necessary.

Other people send meetings because they cannot emotionally tolerate uncertainty.

These are the same people who schedule:

• “Quick Sync”
• “Touch Base”
• “Alignment Discussion”
• “Pre-Meeting for the Meeting”
• “Working Session”
• and the feared:
  “Open Discussion”

An “Open Discussion” is corporate code for:

“No one has a plan, but we’re all going to suffer together.”

Then there’s the CC line.

The CC line is where office politics becomes interpretive art.

One extra person changes the entire meaning of an email.

CC your manager?
Escalation.

CC their manager?
Nuclear doctrine.

BCC?
You are now operating a covert intelligence program.

I love the job.
I love the work.
I love the strange diplomacy of negotiation — the careful dance of pressure, ego, timing, and leverage.

And apparently, I even love my own ability to smile politely while the room quietly turns into a bloodsport.

Yet, somewhere in the middle of all this:
Jesus said,

“Blessed are the peacemakers.”

Which honestly feels medically impossible by Q4.

Because every workplace eventually becomes a tiny kingdom:
territories,
alliances,
resource guarding,
tone analysis,
meeting feuds,
documentation rituals,
and ancient blood wars over spreadsheet ownership.

Especially if that spreadsheet is formulaic!

Everybody wants to be respected.
Everybody wants credit.
Everybody wants control.
Everybody wants somebody else to answer the email.

Except me, I want to answer that dang email my own self.

And yet —
most office tension isn’t actually about work.

It’s fear.

Fear of looking incompetent.
Fear of losing status.
Fear of being ignored.
Fear of carrying too much.
Fear of not mattering at all.

So we armor ourselves in:

• professionalism
• sarcasm
• overexplaining
• strategic vagueness
• “following up again”
• and beautifully crafted email phrasing designed to sound polite while communicating:
  I am at my limit, Deborah.

But Christ never seemed particularly interested in status games.

He washed feet.
He withdrew from crowds.
He spoke plainly.
He wasn’t obsessed with appearing important.
He wasn’t performing urgency every waking second.
And He somehow managed to tell the truth without sounding like a hostage negotiator with Outlook access.

Which means maybe the real miracle in corporate life is not:

• inbox zero
• perfect communication
• or surviving back-to-back Zoom calls.

Maybe it’s remaining kind in systems that reward subtle cruelty.

Maybe holiness in modern work looks like:

• assuming good intent
• answering clearly
• not humiliating people publicly
• resisting the urge to weaponize professionalism
• and never typing:
  “As previously stated…”

even when you absolutely, spiritually deserve to.

Though to be fair, some of you are testing the saints. 🤍

Corporate Phrases That Cause Me To Briefly Leave My Body

• “Let’s circle back.”
• “Let’s align on the alignment.”
• “Quick sync.”
• “Thought partnership.”
• “Bandwidth.”
• “Can you action this?”
• “Parking lot.”
• "Let's reset."
• “Low-hanging fruit.”
• “Tiger team.”
• “Let’s take this offline.”
• “Synergizing synergy.”
• “Per my last email.”
• “Best,”

Let’s circle back offline and pressure-test the cross-functional alignment before we operationalize the initiative.