Why you better get rid of that smiley at work

And there it was, at the bottom of the email... The smiley a.k.a. emoticon. Grinning widely at me and almost doing the macarena. I had never seen the person in real life, shaken hands or laughed on the phone with them, and yet there was such a cheerful thing behind the sentence. In an email. With quite serious content, I can tell you. The content wasn't about numbers and figures, but the tone was indeed serious. Is this okay or is it actually a little bit awkward?

Now I'm not going to pretend I'm Switzerland here, because I too am guilty of this modern emoticon issue. With a graying man nearing retirement, I let it slip from my angry little head – or when there's a lot of back-and-forth typing during the negotiating phase, but I do it when I've put someone in the ‘nice’ box after wine and cheese at a gathering. Although I keep a close eye on whether my elegant typography program doesn't quickly turn into an ugly yellow thing, I dare to do it.

Ha, little daredevil here. 

I'm lucky that there's a lot of ‘schat’ and kissing going on with us, and then you quickly come out of the email mess reasonably businesslike. But to do or not to do? I had to think about that for a moment, until now actually. You were already tipped earlier (here) about what you better leave out in an email, but now the science of emoticons says it too. Because what happens is, people find you less competent when you send emoticons in a business environment. The wow. So if you unsuspectingly send such a laughing creature into the world, you are – hoppa – suddenly much less good at your job. Or you plant a seed. By the way, that seems fun again; they think a little bouncer is coming in who hasn't eaten cheese, but it turns out you have. Look, you can also use it to your advantage if you're interested (like this by the way, you actually look much smarter on the office floor).

Researchers from Ben-Gurion University (which is in Israel) conducted an experiment on test subjects from 29 countries. And rapapapapam… They did not see the smiley as warm or as the equivalent of your (probably bizarrely radiant) smile, but they immediately rated your skills much more negatively.

So let's agree on the following. During the first e-meeting (yes, there are people who call it that, I also find it strange), just leave that laughing face at home on the keyboard. Imagine if the email program suddenly turns it into such a yellow creature: you don't want that. Have you ever said goodbye to someone with a kiss? Then you can certainly add such a funny chuckle to your email. But not when you're going to discuss hard business, because then it just feels a bit, you guessed it, awkward.

For when you're going home. In the case of that new, steaming, hot lover, I would recommend this phenomenon in emoticon land by the way.