PERSONAL PERSPECTIVE E-MAILERS CAN BE INSTANTLY STUPID AND RUDE.

Byline: Joe Mullich

I am fed up with impatient e-mailers.

Impatient e-mailers are a growing, and irritating, group of computer users who become outraged when e-mails they send are not retrieved,read, and responded to within five minutes after they push the send button.

Last week, I logged on to check my e-mails at the end of my workday. I had three waiting from the same client.

At 11:07 a.m., she e-mailed me about some minor business matter that didn't need immediate attention.

At 1:12 p.m., she e-mailed in a huff demanding to know why I had not responded.

At 3:30 p.m., she e-mailed to say I was obviously ignoring her and she questioned whether we should continue doing business together.

I read all three of these e-mails - in their full cycle of friendship, outrage and paranoia - for the first time at 5 p.m. It was like perusing the diary of a schizophrenic. Since people keep hearing that e-mail is ``instantaneous,'' many believe that the instant they push the sendbutton, their e-mail is delivered telepathically to the recipient's brain.

Brightstar, a Novato, Calif., firm that sells Internet software, has even institutionalized impatient e-mailing into an awards contest. For two years now, Brightstar has e-mailed a simple question to leading companies and noted who responded quickest and slowest.

This year, Sears earned the top ``Swift-Es'' award. It responded to an e-mail (``Who is your CEO and how can I contact him or her?'') in nine minutes and 44 seconds.

Coca-Cola came in last place among the ``Tard-Es.'' It took 14 days, two hours and 25 minutes to provide the same information.

Brightstar's greatest scorn was for ``Snub-Es'' - firms that didn't respond to an e-mail at all within a month. Brightstar's CEO Chris Erickson said he was surprised the ``Snub-Es'' included some of the most prominent names in the technology industry, including Motorola, IBM, DellComputer, Lucent Technologies and Intel.

I say, good for the ``Snub-Es''! These are all smart companies that know better than to waste their time with dullards. Does anyone not know that the head of Intel is Andrew Grove? The man shows up on the cover of Fortune Magazine more often than Britney Spears appears on MTV.

If you were a top official at Dell, would you really think much of importance is going to come from talking to someone who doesn't know who Michael Dell is? I would have ignored the e-mail too.

But impatient e-mailers think any e-mail they send is of vital consequence to the recipient and demands instant attention. And because impatient e-mailers often put no thought into their correspondence, they don't recognize that, at the very least, others might wish to reflect ontheir question and take time to give a reasoned response.

If the folks at Brightstar weren't impatient e-mailers themselves, they would have known to ask a better question than ``Who is your CEO?'' I don't care that Morgan Stanley Dean Witter waited four days, two hours and 31 minutes to tell me who their CEO is. I want to know how long it takes them to respond to someone who wants to buy stock. Now that would have meant something.

Instant e-mailers don't care, though. They want technology for technology's sake, not for productivity and profits.

Brightstar found it ``incredible'' that 50 percent of Fortune 100 companies could not be contacted by e-mail via their Web site or made it so difficult that most visitors were unable or unwilling to send e-mails. However, in a press release announcing its contest, Brightstar said further information was available by giving it a phone call.

Brightstar didn't put an e-mail address on the release.

After all, Brightstar knows reporters are always on deadline. And when intelligent people need important information fast, they'd rather pick up the phone and talk to a human being than send an e-mail and twiddle their thumbs hoping an answer comes back in time.