Confirmation niggle

I try not to moan on this blog, but the occasional work-related grumble can't help but break through. In this week's spirit of finishing off and tidying up, I sent off two big chunks of work at the start of the week (to different publishers). Each one represented scores of hours' work and together they amounted to £3000's worth of work. Both were emailed as attachments and each was copied in to two members of in-house staff. To date, I've had no confirmation that either has been received!

Now unless there's something wrong with my internet connection and both have mysteriously gone astray (which I very much doubt), that strikes me as pretty poor etiquette, especially as both editors had been pushing me to get the work finished and stressing how much they needed it on time! It kind of leaves you wondering why you bothered to rush...

Whenever I receive any material, via email or post, I always make sure that I confirm receipt straight away and I have to say that most of the in-house folk I work with are pretty good about it too. It surely doesn't take much just to fire off a quick email saying "I received the stuff you sent, thanks.", does it?!

Email faux pas

Last week, I sent an email to an in-house editor to chase up an invoice that I'd sent but hadn't heard back about. Having had problems with a previous invoice on the same project, I just wanted confirmation it'd been put through okay. This morning, while I was putting together my mental to-do list over breakfast, I realised that I still hadn't heard anything. So when I sat down at my desk, another, this time more urgent, email was top of my list. Then just as I waiting for my computer to start up and was composing what I was going to say in my head, it suddenly occurred to me that I might've sent my last message to the wrong person ... the editor in question has a very similar name to someone else I've worked with at a different publisher and of course, they're right next to each other in my address book. Lo and behold, when I went back to look at my sent items, I had indeed got them muddled up!

I sent off a quick email to the right person and soon got a message back to apologise for not replying and saying that the invoice had gone through - relief. Now, I'm just wondering whether or not I should drop the other editor a quick message to explain and apologise for the random email? The fact that it's been nearly a week and he's said nothing, makes me think he probably just deleted it, so perhaps it's better not to draw attention to my stupidity!