A reader writes:

I run outbound marketing for a tech startup serving founders and salespeople. We often send promotional/announcement emails from my email address to subscribers who have opted in to receive our updates.

We recently sent a very harmless and innocuous announcement message, to which I received the following reply: “Why the FUCK am I getting this email”

The message was from a personal Gmail account and included the sender’s cell phone number. A quick LinkedIn search revealed that the sender is employed at a major financial services firm as a personal wealth advisor (investment manager) for high net worth individuals.

What he doesn’t know is, I’m a client of his firm. While he is not my investment advisor, one of his colleagues is, and his unreasonable reply — in response to a message he opted in to receive — honestly makes me reconsider my business relationship with the firm. If they employ someone who casually exhibits this degree of unprofessionalism, especially when it took more time to send an abusive reply than it would have to just … delete the email and never think of it again (even deleting and unsubscribing would have taken less time!), it undermines my trust in their ability to manage my money.

So my question is, should I make someone at the firm aware of his behavior? I could let my own investment manager know, but I’m not sure what he would do about it, other than directing me to someone higher up in the organization. Blasting this guy publicly on LinkedIn isn’t really my style, but a world in which someone can be disproportionately abusive in response to a low-stakes “problem” like a marketing email is not one I want to live in, let alone support by giving them my business. I also understand the logic of letting it go, especially given that the reply came from his personal email address, but it’s really made me mad and I don’t want his conduct to go unacknowledged because acting like it’s okay when it clearly isn’t feels like a tacit endorsement. Should I let his employer know?

Nah, let it go. They won’t care.

I’d argue you shouldn’t really care either. A ton of people forget they’ve subscribed to email lists and then send rude responses when they’re annoyed to receive what they think is spam, not realizing they opted in. Is it rude and, frankly, fruitless? Yes, absolutely. Is it something his employer will care about? Probably not. Will it look extremely strange to contact them about it? Yes.

I don’t want to imply that we should accept casual rudeness as the norm. We shouldn’t! But you’re also kind of overreacting to it in this case. He thought it was spam, he was annoyed and, yes, his response was over the top, but your response to it is also pretty disproportionate.

If this guy were your investment manager, I could see caring a little more — like who is this hothead I have managing my money and how else does he behave when he thinks he’s anonymous? But you’re far enough removed from him that you should just delete his reply and not give it any additional thought. (Or at most, you could reply to say, “You received this message because you opted into our mailing list. I’ll remove you.” But nothing beyond that.)

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