Okay, I can understand wanting to congratulate a team member. It’s not my team, but I can understand it. It’s not my department, but I can understand it.
But why, oh, why, do you have to send out an e-mail to everyone in the building? There are over 500 of us to whom this has absolutely no relevance!!!
As if this weren’t bad enough, why is it that when someone replies saying “way to go!” they have to hit “reply to all” so that everybody’s mailbox gets crammed with this back-patting crap?
If you want to give kudos, don’t make a whole song and dance of it. Congratulate, then get out of the way. And if you want to respond to one of these congratulatory messages, do so where it’s relevant, for chrissakes! If I get another series of a dozen e-mails chiming in just to e-shake someone’s hand, I’m going to fucking explode!
At the hospital I worked at, I was on something like five or six different e-mail lists. Some, like the ones for my shift and department, I really needed. The union occasionally had good information, and the hospital all-employee list was mandatory. The other two were from an association with the radiology department which lasted about 3 months.
After I left, one of the X-ray techs had a baby. So, I ended up getting dozens of e-mails congratulating her. The system wouldn’t let me terminate the message to my own mailbox, since it was department-wide, and it took two frantic messages to the listowners to get me off those lists.
Having to deal with (literally) a dozen and a half messages that’re spam keeps me from being able to deal with the one or two I actually need to act on.
Then you have the ninnies that respond to the original message complaining about the use of the hospital’s e-mail system for spam and glurge. Right, people. Let’s add another dozen messages bitching to the dozen that thank the sender for such an inspirational message. :rolleyes:
Oh, I think I disagree, blessedwolf. At least, around my office, it’s unfortunately pretty seldom that somebody stands up and recognizes somebody else’s contribution. ‘Attaboys’ and ‘warm fuzzies’ are pretty infrequent. So I really like to see them come down, even when they’re not directed at me personally. It makes me feel better to know that somebody in authority recognizes it when somebody else does a good job, and is willing to publicly say so. It also gives us the opportunity to congratulate each other on things that we would not have otherwise known were going on. I can stick my head in my neighbor’s office and say ‘hey, Bob, congrads on landing the Yoyodyne contract’ even though before I saw the message from his boss I didn’t even know he was working on it.
Now, at the same time, I really don’t need to see forty-leven people’s messages congratulating Bob, either, so I agree with you and msrobyn that people should be more discriminating in using the ‘reply all’ button. But that applies in all situations, including meeting announcements, weather bulletins, and any other mass distributions.
That happens where I work too, and I fucking hate it. An ‘Organizational Announcement’ goes out, some guy I’ve never heard of got a promotion, then there are two dozen ‘Way to go!’ reply-to-all emails sent out. One of the managers sent out an email about it, saying not to hit reply-to-all, if you feel the need to congratulate them send it to that person alone. Well, some lower-level management guy did a reply-to-all to THAT email, saying he disagreed and felt that when someone on his team got promoted, they deserved a public congratulations. The fucking organizational announcement congratulates the guy who has managed to kiss enough ass to be kicked into a position where they can do minimal harm, and it goes to everyone. The people who do these repy-to-alls seem to be people who are trying to ride the coattails of the people getting promoted, to get their name recognized and out there. I think it has nothing to do with congratulating the promotee.
Ah yes, this warms the heart. Limited access to distribution lists is nice. Good email administrators know this, they do not assume Joe and Jane User have the common sense to understand the appropriate use of email. Cut them off, restrict the access to large distribution lists to those who have a need to access them. A recommendation for those of you who are getting spammed to death, send a nice email to the postmaster (or mail admin or whatever they call it in your company) and bring up the possibility of restricting access to large mailing lists to only those who need access in order to reduce spam and excess mail traffic.
All companies should have a policy concerning the appropriate use of computer systems. This policy should cover inappropriate use of email. This policy should be enforced.
Of course some smaller companies will not have such mechanisms in place, but the number of employees should limit the problem in those cases.
Ah yes, time to make it pitworthy. Nothing worse than some jackass trying to send a goddamned email hoax to the whole fuckin company.
Just the way I see it, not that I have ever been involved in a problem like this or in its resolution;)
I’m with ya, blessedwolf. I get at least one e-mail a day telling me that so-and-so was promoted to lead the Southeast regional marketing or whatever nonsense…
I work in California. I will never come into contact with so-and-so. This e-mail will be the first and last time I see his or her name. So what’s the point??? I don’t need to hear about new personel in Arkansas!
Okay, THOSE emails I don’t mind. What I hate is that in my office, there’s this one woman who thinks she has to email her vacation plans to everyone in the office.
I don’t CARE if you’re going to be out tomorrow!!! ARGH!!
This is something that truly burns my ass. I work in a large school district and we have started receiving emails from outside the district on all kinds of stupid things. We get enough crap from inside. Every time someone retires we all get the notices, which in May and June runs into the hundreds. I don’t look, just delete.
Then… since July there has been an unopened virus floating about. Our techies have sent numerous emails saying, don’t open emails with the subject line of…and of course people are STILL opening the fucking things. The consequence? the email is sent to everybody in the district and then some other fool opens it and the same thing happens. One day alone, we had over 60 of these idiots opening and sending.