CH87: Fangs

My former colleagues laud me for my proficiency in crafting e-mails. They say I can undertone a bitch reply without it seeming like so (minus the explicits). Or I can put down somebody in the email to prove a point - without being "hey-fucker-get-your-act-together" obvious.

Today, after getting this email:

"I have checked R4ChaRM and R3ChaRM. The retrofit system setup is wrong.

The current setting means from R4 to R3. Logical component should be put in R3ChaRM no[t] in R4ChaRM."

My right eye-brow did it's familiar reflex...

We've had a lot of meetings already on how the setup will be performed. The guy who sent me an email already had a heated argument with one of my senior on this. And, it pissed me that it seemed like a back of the hand slap to receive an email after doing the work when in all the discussions he never did insist on his point. (Prior to this he raised a point to include several setting parameters to an activity I completed over the weekend. He could have brought it up before I started!) 

My reply (to-all) to his emial went like:

"It has been brought up several times during the meeting that you were in that we won't be touching the R3ChaRM configurations. I was in the understanding that whatever configuration we will be making for R4 will be done independently of existing R3.
"If you believe that it is wrong, then can you please suggest a workaround then to configuring Retrofit without impacting R3. Or otherwise, please have Katjun arrange to discuss with R3 to reconfigure their Charm setup to include R4, as we seem to keep looping back to this topic. "


I reread it several times before sending it out.
And I realized that the email indeed has its undertones.
It doesn't seem defensive - which wasn't at all my mood then.
It's concise, plus it provides suggestion to actions to take to move the conversation forward.

Should you fear the long and sharp fangs or the fangs coated with venom?