For fuck’s sake, learn the difference between “reply” and “reply to all”! Case in point. We have this little teamwork award thing that gets circulated periodically. I hate it, because when it gets awarded an email announcement goes out to the team. And 3/4 of the team feels compelled to email back “Congratulations!” or “Good job, you deserve it!” or something equally vapid and pointless. Fine, send it to the recipient, but the rest of us don’t need to get your congratulations. It’s not like anyone’s keeping score of who sent congratulations emails and who didn’t. “Uh-oh, Will didn’t spam the team with a congrats email, he must dissent from the group on Nicole’s worthiness to receive the teamwork award!” I resent that you waste even the second of my life it takes to delete your crap.
We had a similar e-mail incident not too long ago. Basically what happened was, one person sent out one of those urban legend hoaxes. They sent it to everyone in NYS in our organization, for some reason.
Then we had 6-7 e-mails going back, all of whom hit “reply to all” referring them to snopes.com, debunking the legend.
Then we had one e-mail sent out to all from one snotty little bitch who basically told everyone - including the State Director - to “stop wasting her time” and to keep her off these mass e-mails and not to send letters to everyone. Remember, she hit reply to all again, not just to the source of the e-mail.
I couldn’t resist, and I replied - solely to her, I tie my own shoelaces and everything - asking her if she wasn’t guilty of the same damn thing she was bitching about.
and the moral is: Learn to use e-mail, people. It’s not difficult. Put it this way: Don’t hit reply to all unless you really, really, think everyone needs your e-mail.
Won’t work. The initial email gets sent to a distribution list, not to individuals. So RTA replies to the sender and the distribution list.
See, that’s the problem, I think they think that everyone does need to see the email. It’s not purely a tech thing; it’s an “I need to let everyone know I concur” thing. It’s a problem with the (and shoot me for saying it) “corporate culture.”
The d-list address can still be put in the Bcc line, but I think the person sending it may be smart enough to know the replies will still come back to him/her and wants all of you to suffer as well
This reply-to-all thing is only exacerbated by the mad, careless, ass-covering cc-ing that goes on.
I had to send an e-mail the other day that was something to the effect of:
TO: [colleague, who controls Big Boss’s calendar, who is on vacation]
CC: [my boss, on vacation] [Big Boss, also on vacation] [other colleague who is not on vacation but who has access to the calendar of the Big Boss] [another colleague, just to keep her in the loop]
SUBJECT: Event on April 1
Hi Colleague
I note that Event on April 1 is not in Boss’s calendar. I have requested that [other colleague] put it in. Please let me know if this presents a problem.
I mean really. It’s always like this. It’s not just because they’re on vacation.
Make sure you cc everyone - and remember, if you cc someone remember to cc their scheduler and EA as well - who could conceivably have any interest in this matter whatsoever, because if someone doesn’t see it who should have seen it (or worse! if someone sees it who shouldn’t see it) then there will be trouble.
Oh, and even better: I work part-time here, and I have on more than one occasion been called in on my day off to send an e-mail, presumably because they wanted it coming out of my account in case something went wrong. (Which it did, in the end - someone got it who shouldn’t have - but that was entirely not my fault.)
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again … Fuck temping !
We had to re-change the password on a network service account recently because the first update to the password was broadcast via reply-all to the entire group of people who had been on the initial report of the problem.
The punchline? The person who hit reply-all and sent the new password to everybody was the IS manager for the location.
(And then that individual got mad at me when I pointed this out, not via reply-all for the record, and suggested that it would probably be a good idea to change the password again.)
I will write people up for sending e mail improperly. When you send to ALL in our company, it goes to everyone including our European offices. Everyone is told in Orientation how to use email correctly. People in Texas don’t care if the bathroom in the Ohio office is closed. No one in London is going to fly across the country just to eat the cake in the breakroom in Ohio.
While I’d never want to debate you on the actual nuts and bolts of your own office, since I get this sort of thing on my private non-work related email, I don’t think you can call it ‘corporate culture’. I think it’s either ego, or idiocy. (Or is that idiocy disguised as ego?)
I’m seconding your suggestion, as that’s the standard trick that we use on our corporate mail system.
On our corporate mail system (Lotus Notes), you don’t even have to have an entry in the “To:” section if you have one in the “Bcc:” section, so we often send emails like the following…
From: me
To:
Bcc: Half the civilized world and a third of the barbarians.
Here’s a flip side of the coin: I used to get all this horrible pro-Bush, anti-any-Democrat spam from my aunt. One day it was so hateful and ridiculous that I hit Reply All, and attached the contents of a post by, I think, elucidator. I got yanked right off that distribution list so fast it made my head spin.
In some cases, I think it might be stupidity. I was overlooking an email response by a classmate to a bunch of people, and she went to hit “Reply to All”. I stopped her, and told her that she should just use Reply. Her response?
“But I want to reply to her entire message”
Where’s Smackie when you need him???
I somehow managed to keep a straight face and told her the difference, but…Fuck! How stupid can you be??
A week later, I got an email from her, replying to the sender of another email which I had also received. Apparently she didn’t learn her lesson. Thank god that class project ended!
Back in my airforce days, we had a master sergeant accidentally hit ‘reply to all’ in an email in which he basically told off a Liutenant for some indescretion or argument they were having. He was right in his arguement ( remember that, but not the specifics), but that doesn’t matter, he needed to use more tact…and NOT hit reply to all.
Amazingly, he didn’t lose rank, but he was forced to make a public apology to the rest of the unit and the officer in question, and got in a big stinking pile of shit.
I work at a large medical center. A couple weeks ago, someone sent out an E-mail with several large Excel files attached, sent to a bunch of people listed in the To: field. A day later, a second E-mail arrived from the same sender. This appeared to be merely the exact same message sent previously, along with all attachments, except this time it was a forward, had all of the recipients’ names listed in a long column in the original part of the message, and the only thing added was “Thanks!” and her E-mail signature again. I have no idea what that was about.
Are you sure it was an accident? It may well have been worth it for that Master Sergeant to chew out the LT in front of the whole unit, even knowing he’d have to apologize later. Certainly, I can’t imagine that that LT had much respect from any of the other mid to upper level enlisted after that. Which may well be what the Master Sergeant had intended.
Ah, I have a story of the Reply to All… but mine is a good one.
My mother used to send out emails to family members on the status of her mother (my grandmother), whose health had been declining steadily for two years (she died last month but that’s not the point of the story). The list included all my aunts and uncles, cousins, second cousins, and people I have no idea how I’m related to.
Anyway, the emails usually involved “woe is me” type, thinly veiled complaints about her siblings who had never lifted a finger to help their mother out, leaving my mother in sole charge. (No, she probably shouldn’t have been sending these little digs out, but it was the only way she could vent her frustration at what was happening. Long story, for another day.)
After one of these less-subtle-than-usual emails (“I wish someone cared enough to help me out here”), one of my cousins Replied to All with a tirade about my “poor pitiful martyr” mother, who was always the favorite, and who now has to reap what she sowed.
It should be noted at this point, that at the time, said cousin had a baby daughter who was slowly learning to call my mother “Mama,” while she went off to the pool hall with friends under the guise of “night classes at college.”
I wrote back, “You should be thankful, that martyr is raising your child.” And Replied to All, on purpose.
Ooh the drama that ensued. I don’t regret it to this day.
GAAAAAAAGH! They did it again! The award winner from yesterday passed it off today and again the freakin’ avalanche of emails begins! Does anyone really think that the whole fucking department needs to read
Thank christ it’s close to the end of the day. Maybe people will neglect to send more congrulatory shit today and by tomorrow they’ll get that it’s stooooopid!
