I've been worried about a particular situation at work for the last couple of weeks. I'd thought of blogging about the situation detailed below and the flurry of abusive emails from one particular academic that gave rise to this letter from my boss. I'd hoped to write about it but was also hyper-conscious of protecting peoples' privacy - even if they happen to be people who verbally attack my colleagues, myself and the people I work under.

Maybe it's old fashioned of me, but the fact that he's verbally attacked my boss (who is a woman) makes me twice as pissed off. Add to the equation that I've had dealings with the person described below plenty of times over the last ten years, and never had a problem with him before. I thought he was a decent guy. I guess I was wrong.

Dear Brendan and -----,

I’ve been out of the office for the last week, so I’m sorry that I’m only now contacting you about the wholly unacceptable emails you’ve received from ---- -------. Please rest assured that his opinion does not reflect my opinion, or library management’s generally, nor indeed the opinion of the rest of the body of academic staff about the quality of service you are providing. You are offering a fantastic service with a wonderfully helpful approach, and you most certainly don’t deserve the sort of language and tone that ---- ------- has used.

This man has been finding difficulty with absolutely everything we’ve put in place instead of [irrelevant name for outmoded service] and this last was one of many emails of the same nature I’ve received from him. I’ve also had communication from his head of school apologising to me for the language and tone that he has used in previous emails and asking us to try to ignore it – can I please ask you to try to do the same. It’s not easy I know – his emails are most upsetting, but we need to hold our heads up high and know with confidence that we’re offering a great service and he is being entirely unreasonable in his criticisms of the scanning service.

I really appreciate the great service you are offering with the scanning chapter service, and I hope that you will try to ignore these unreasonable remarks and remain confident that you are doing a great job.

Best regards,

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