Quotes at the end of an email are becoming more popular. They’re of various sizes and come from a host of sources. Some are simple, while others require reflection to truly appreciate the intended message. What they seem to do is take up a bunch of space on an email and ultimately clutter up the printed version. It seems to me like they are only good one time. Once read, they add nothing to an email.
A very good friend of mine from Arkansas has such a quote on his email. I can’t repeat it verbatim. I have no idea where it came from, but I do recall the gist. What I gleaned from my initial quick reading is that, no matter where we go or what we do, we leave a little evidence of our past presence. The friend is a retired police officer, and my take was that he was referring to physical evidence and a crime scene. When I read his quote the first time, I thought about it in bigger terms. Everything we do affects the world, whether we recognize it or not.
Last week, I went out of town to interview witnesses in an upcoming capital murder trial. I stayed in the same hotel I usually do when in this particular city. It’s a nice hotel and a member of a national chain. I generally have no complaints when I stay there except they have only Pepsi products. My contact with one of the hotel’s ghosts from the past gave me something new to complain about.
Everything went well up until bedtime. I got into the bed fitted with what appeared to be freshly cleaned sheets. I pulled the sheets loose and readied myself for sleep, slept for a couple of hours, and was awakened by the call of nature. I answered the call and climbed back into bed. As I kicked the sheets around and prepared to settle back into my slumber, my foot came across something at the front of the bed. It was a baby Tabasco bottle, and it was empty.
Immediately, I jumped up with shock and examined the treasure trove in my bed. My first thought was about me not being the only traveler to sleep on the sheets since they were cleaned. My next thought was about what I was going to do about it. I was tired. Moving rooms wasn’t going to help because there was no way to be sure the next bed had clean sheets on it unless I watched someone make the bed. And how long was getting someone up to the room to change the sheets on the bed going to take? Way too long. I went back to bed.
The next morning, I took the bottle down to the front desk. I asked the young man at the desk to please yell at somebody and to try to prevent this from happening again. I would note that, before I left the room, I left my own present in the bed. It was a business card that said, “If you find this card in the bed, it means these sheets have not been cleaned in two days. Call me, and we will sue.” I did not get a call, so maybe the young man did some yelling.
On second thought, I have to admit that those quotes at the end of the email signature do seem to be a good way to brand yourself. Seeing the quotes over and over brings the emotion of the quote back to the reader, even if subconsciously. From now on, every time I see my friend’s quote about leaving something behind, I will think about that bottle in my bed. If I’m out of town, I’ll be thinking about it in a different hotel. While I realize I’ve probably slept in dirty sheets before, I do like plausible deniability. What you don’t know doesn’t always hurt you. Sometimes you are simply better off not knowing. That’s true for everyone, especially those of us way up in the CHEAP SEATS!
Bill James is a co-founder of the James Law Firm with offices in Little Rock, Conway and Fayetteville, Arkansas. His primary area of practice is criminal defense. He can be contacted at Bill@JamesFirm.com