Perhaps It’s Just Pure Incompetency

I’ve been peripherally watching the Karl Rove e-mail story.  I just saw this headline: “Lawyer: Rove Didn’t Mean to Delete Email.”  That might seem a bit far-fetched, but I have first hand experience with this matter.  The story below is true.

Several years ago, while working at ADP, I was tasked with conducting training for our users on e-mail retention policies.  I ended up at someone’s desk as she attempted to find some missing e-mail.  We went through a variety of scenarios before stumbling upon the truth of her filing system: she used the Deleted Items container in Outlook to archive all of her mail.  When she was done with a message, she simply deleted it, then if she needed to find it in the future, she knew it was in that folder.

At some point, her Deleted Items got permanently removed, and all hell broke loose.

My understanding is that she has since been promoted to a Vice President role dealing with Marketing.