I hate reactions in outlook. It’s fine when it’s a chat program like Teams. But when I’m deal with emails that pertains to my work, kind of unprofessional to reply back with a thumbs up.
Not sure if I ranted on this before.
I have some more complex opinions on this. Like yeah, on the one hand, I wholeheartedly agree
on principle that an
email application
should not have chat-style reactions. Conversely? Outlook is complete and total rubbish through and through. Even before the "new" Outlook launched like last year or the year before where it's literally just Outlook Web but in a desktop app, the "old" Outlook was still a sluggish pain in the goddamn ass that could hardly do anything without devouring half your RAM while it struggles to synchronise your inboxes with Microsoft Exchange. I very specifically eschewed the Outlook desktop application for the
entire time that I've used Outlook in favour of the web version because fuck it: 99% of my shit is basically living out of Microsoft Edge and pivoting between OneDrive, Teams, and Excel. Might as well add Outlook to that mix.
The "reactions" at my old job were novel, but the younger employees (myself included) basically used the "thumbs-up" as a quick and dirty way of saying "Yeah, I saw this, I acknowledge it, and it will be actioned ASAP." My old job had several of my teammates and I regularly going to the warehouse where cargo was stored specifically to take photos of the cargo as it arrives from the airport or the seaport before rapidly replying via Outlook Mobile to both the customer and the overseas export teams. Outlook Mobile these days is
very much in line with Outlook Web, so reactions were commonplace.
Most of the time, it wasn't as simple as breaking the seal on the container or lifting up the door of the box truck bringing the cargo over, and taking pictures of the requisite pallets. Most of our shipments were consolidated, and we never liked hawking over the warehouse guys when they were already busting their asses rapidly getting everything out into the customs bonded area of the warehouse for further inspection via forklift and pallet jack. So it would take 20-30 minutes for an entire truck or an entire consolidation to be unloaded, but that was fine since we had dozens of shipments to take photos of regardless.
Let's say that while I'm downstairs waiting for all my shipments to get out of the box truck or the container, I get like 4 different emails from several other people I was working with earlier in the day. I'm already focused on one task, so I basically just "thumb-up" the emails via Outlook reactions to signal to my team leads (who were basically in my age bracket and already used Outlook Web over desktop Outlook the way management does) "hey so-and-so, thanks for forwarding this to me, I'll get to it." I take my photos of each shipment I'm working on, reply to the customer, overseas export, whoever else that I have the photos, and then rush back to my desk to properly action those items in a "professional" manner.
If I had to refocus the critique, I'd argue that Outlook really needs an "internal notes" section for every email thread instead of a "reaction." There
are email clients that do this, but unfortunately, that's squarely in the realm of third party software that's in corporate IT's hands to authorise. Like... we ain't even allowed to use Mozilla Thunderbird over Outlook with our Microsoft Exchange accounts, so we damn sure ain't allowed to use a third-party email client that auto-groups emails into threads and gives us internal comments. It's either official web portal or official desktop application. Internal notes for every email thread would basically be substantial insofar as documenting stuff as it pops up. Like oh no, there's a puncture in the plastic surrounding Pallet #A6817 and Pallet #B7928 has a really nasty hole in the side. Note that, upload the pictures via internal comment, have that shit visible to leadership and then go to the ops manager's desk with my team lead to discuss the next course of action.