Phew! Thank goodness I don't work at the University of St Andrews where Sally Mapstone, the VC, who has a reputation for disdaining email guff, advised – or was that told? – academics not to waste time and cyber space resources putting irrelevant text into e-mails.
The VC introduced three rules for her colleagues when she took up the post in 2016:
- never start an email with “I hope this finds you well”
- never end one with the sign-off “I trust you find this useful”, and
- never wear corduroy to work.
Given all this, and as reported in The Times, Phil O’Brien, who is head of the University’s School of International Relations and one of the world’s foremost authorities on the war in Ukraine, was understandably surprised to receive an email from a colleague that started with the outlawed phrase.
It turned out to be from a Russian hacker. A lesson here, surely, for other VCs, if not for us all – especially rule 3.
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