how to object to an AOL email address

[Adcadet]

I've spent the past 6 months looking for my next research project, and am very happy to have found one that is almost perfect (famous last words...). The research area* is back in my old stomping ground and matches the clinical area I'm interested in, and the field was basically invented here. My "boss" is fun to work with so far, and my boss's boss is as well (he literally wrote the book on how to do the kind of research we're doing). The only problem is that the main guy I'm working with uses a .aol.com email address. Yes, the man has undoubtedly been using computers for at least 10 years. Yes, he holds a doctoral-level degree, and has completed post-graduate training in some of the most competitive fields. Yes, he is responsible for putting very small things in very important places to save lives. Yes, he is currently completing a degree that practically requires computer literacy. But he still uses a .aol.com email address.

I was lucky to have worked with a pretty computer literate guy for the project I've been working on for the past 3 years, and it was oh so nice to be able to refer to a "file extension" and not get a blank look (with the kind of research we do, you really should know something about computer tech). I have no idea how computer literate my new "boss" is, but I'm afraid he's back in 1988 with that pox of an email account. How do I politely suggest he use ANYTHING ELSE? He could use a standard university email address. He could use one from either of the two School's he's in. He could use one from one of the Divisions he's in. I could give him a gmail account to use. ANYTHING!

Given my job search of sorts coming up in the next 9 months, this guy could be crucial to my future, so pissing him off would not be wise. But I can't stand getting emails that end in .aol.com. I just about have my spam filters set to delete all of those automatically.

Adcadet

* I'm trying to be vague in many ways here just to avoid having something come back to bit me, but I'm guessing some of you could put the pieces together and guess where it is that my new gig is at, what field in general we're working in, and even who I'm working with. Oh, and I did get accepted into a 4-week stint at TWFMC, the city which is also known for IBM. Yay!

 

[LOST6200]

I'm sure he has more ioprtant things to dothan change his email accounts for yuor condvenince. If one ofmy direct or indirect reports asked me to do something lik that I would be very uhnapy to say the least. ;( It is only an emails account, try to keep that in persective.

 

[Tannin]

LONG ANSWER:

Some otherwise perfectly intelligent people have inexplicable blind spots, and quite often will defend their irrational choice with tenacity and ferocity.

Talked to a Mac user this decade?

Or someone who insists, overwhelming evidence to the contrary, that Internet Explorer is a rational and safe way to surf the web?

Some people actually insist that Telstra is a good company to deal with - including, to my intense shame, my own father, who (that aside) is an intelligent, well-educated man.

AOL is presumably another of those bizare blindness things. Thankfully, we don't have it in Australia, not to speak of.

Beware challenging such deeply-rooted behaviour. Chances are, your lord and master has been challenged on this one before, and takes pride in savaging any "foolish geeks" who try to point out his error.

In a contest between evidence, logic, rationality, and ego, bet on ego every time.

---------------------------

SHORT ANSWER:

Keep your big mouth shut.

 

[MaxBurn]

Yeah, I would add that one address to my approved list and not mention it at all to him. If he hasn't cared about it for this long than your bringing it up is just going to be an annoyance.

 

[Sol]

You could just ask if he has another address because you prefer to not use aol addresses. If he asks why then you can explain your concerns. You'd want to be prepared to let the issue drop but that could at least be a low risk way to bring the subject up... That said it's probably not really worth the effort...

 

[Mercutio]

I get dinged by people from time to time for preferring my @yahoo.com address to other addresses I have or that I'm entitled to have. For me, @yahoo is a reliable first-layer spam filter that forwards messages to my actual e-mail address. Plus I've been using that address for seven years now. It would be very hard to ditch yahoo for that reason alone.

Your buddy has probably been using AOL since the first floppy he got in the mail. AOL doesn't provide many tools to migrate mail off AOL and even most computer savvy people have no idea what the hell IMAP is, so that's probably not an option for him, either.

A lot of non-computer professionals (architects, lawyers etc) maintain AOL addresses simply because the lion's share of their customers use AOL as well.

If you REALLY want to bring up your reservations about AOL, do it with good humor and tact and be sure to offer your help in migrating his mail to some kind of actual mail service.

Hint: Thunderbird configured for IMAP can download the messages to a file in mbox format, which just about anything that isn't webmail can read with ZERO difficulty.

 

[Tannin]

Of course, the first line in a lot of other people's spam filters is to reject anything that comes from yahoo, but that's another story ....