Tuesday, April 26, 2011

Annoying Threads

This post is not about clothes. 

I get annoyed at those threads that hang off your hem and tickle the back of your leg but you can never find them when you look. . . . but that's not exactly blog worthy.

E-mail threads aren't blog worthy either, but that's what I am writing about.

I was out of the office last week.

I returned to 276 e-mails.

At first I thought that the high volume of e-mails was due to my critically important job and the fact that I need to be "in the know" on several salient issues.

Then I figured out the high volume of calls was due to a disprortionate amount of dumb-asses who hit "REPLY ALL". 

Sometimes REPLY ALL is a valuable tool.  REPLY ALL is helpful when you need everyone on the thread to know something.

For example:

Original E-Mail (sent to 30 e-mail addresses):  "Can anyone cite the regulation mandating student fees?  I can't find it"

REPLY ALL:  "It's in the GIPWE, Chapter 3.  It also lists exceptions"  This is a very good use of REPLY ALL.

Most of my e-mails looked like this:

REPLY ALL: "Thanks"  (Poor use of REPLY ALL)

REPLY ALL: "I don't know where it is. Hope someone else does". (Very poor use of REPLY ALL.)


REPLY ALL:  "Hey Sender!  Did you know that someone parked in your space this morning?" (WTF use of REPLY ALL)

REPLY ALL: "I know -- I totally had to park in the handicapped space this morning! LOL!"  (WTF use of REPLY ALL plus one LOL infraction, plus Sender is an asshole for parking in a handicapped space.)

After getting through at least 80 REPLY ALLs, plus the weekday lunch menus, stupid chain jokes and the notice about the Kindergarten's Easter Party, I had about 30 real e-mails.

I am just not that important.

5 comments:

  1. In college, several of my extracurricular activities maintained mailing lists. At the bottom of EVERY EMAIL, there were instructions on how to remove yourself from the mailing list. Yet after every email, a person would reply all to the ENTIRE MAILING LIST asking for someone to remove them from the mailing list.

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  2. Amen, sister, on the unmitigated hate for about 99% of replies all.

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  3. HA HAAAAAA...I hate people that use Reply All incorrectly! So annoying!

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  4. It's even better when someone insults either the original sender or possibly the subject of the e-mail, and instead of sending it merely to the one or two people he intended to be in on the joke, hits REPLY ALL instead.

    Much Hilarity Ensues.


    wv: - Darre- Like a Double Dare from when you were little.

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  5. Couldn't agree more . . . and most people who do this are repeat offenders.

    However . . . we switched to Gmail (for business, whatever that's called) at my job and it minimizes this problem because of the way it batches conversations. Long live Gmail!

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I LOVE to read comments. Seriously. I check them every day. Insecure? Maybe.