An email goes to the wrong company distribution list. In and of itself, that would be mere nullity if at least a third of the workforce didn’t inevitably reply – “to everyone”.
Any resemblance to persons living or dead is purely coincidental.
Anyone who works in an office for a company with more than 30 employees has probably experienced it before: a colleague writes a very innocent e-mail, perhaps a short request or quick information. An email that only makes sense for a certain group of employees. He wants to send them to this appropriate group, but gets the wrong distributor.
Instead of going to [email protected], the letter goes out to [email protected]. All. And if Everyone don’t happen to be sitting in the same open-plan office, but in a huge company building, maybe even at different locations … then let’s get started.
And as a “spectator” of the spectacle, you suddenly start to wonder. There are all these hundreds, maybe even thousands of people who use computers and write, read, sort emails every day. Actually you can. They are absolutely capable, intelligent people. And yet the avalanche is rolling.
First, a helpful human will do the right thing and reply to the sender that the message was probably going out to an unnecessarily large audience. And it makes sense that he will reply to the entire mailing list so that everyone knows: Okay, someone informed the sender about his faux pas. The logical conclusion would be: Then I don’t have to do that anymore!
Please explain the mailing list to the people
You could now sip your coffee in front of the PC screen and be happy that you weren’t the one who made this public error. But that never happens. The first answer will be followed by others. First ten, then twenty, then a hundred. “I don’t think this email was meant for me?”, “That was the wrong mailing list!”, “I don’t understand the email, should it really be sent to me?” “PLEASE STOP USING THE ‘REPLY ALL’ FEATURE!”, “Unsubscribe me, please.”, “Me too!”, “Yes, unsubscribe me too, please!”, “YOU DON’T HAVE TO ANSWER EVERYONE !”
At this point, the unfortunate sender is probably squirming under his desk, because of course he didn’t want to trigger something like that. The e-mail wave has now gripped the entire company and it seems unstoppable. The “perpetrator” could take a deep breath: He just made a mistake that can happen. On the other hand, many, many other colleagues, including many superiors, are revealing that their knowledge of handling e-mails has apparently been showing astonishing gaps for years.
Tech skills have nothing to do with job titles
People who have one or more “Dr.” in their signature ask. stand, something with “President” or “Vice” or “Chief”, that they should be removed from the mailing list – if the mailing list was called [email protected] and of course absolutely correctly Everyone Company e-mail addresses are collected in it, if a message really needs to be sent to each individual employee. It happens. You cannot and should not remove anyone from it manually. But how mailing lists work seems to have not really been explained to some bigwigs.
The poor sender has since done everything in his power: withdrew the email, sent out an email apologizing and asking not to respond to it anymore. A futile request, of course.
The first pranksters are now beginning to address the entertainment value of the mail wave. Others become increasingly irritated because the emails just won’t stop. They try (sweetly!) to explain the principle of the mailing list to their colleagues, they try to explain the “Reply to all” function, they try to explain that the “problem” has long since been resolved and only the endless replies are still causing trouble .
After all, you learn a lot about your colleagues
After a few hours it slowly subsides. One might think it was finally over. Some breathe a sigh of relief, others are a little disappointed. It was all a bit exciting. But, don’t worry, it’s not over yet. You just have to wait until the late shift starts – or the next day.
Finally, there is a whole bunch of colleagues who, for a variety of reasons, were not there on the day of the event and missed the whole spook. They will open their mailbox, see the flood of mail, but of course they will not bother to actually read one or more of the messages. And it won’t be long before, after several hours of silence, another “I’m not meant, please take it off the mailing list!” arrives …
Two notable causes come together here. First: People who have been working with office technology for years but still find it unreasonable to deal with it. Second: people who seem so indispensable that they cannot take the time to first get an overview of a situation before giving their opinion on it or giving a command (“Unsubscribe me!”) in bark the ether. The combination of both fuels the distribution catastrophe more and more.
Madness has a certain fascination
Because, seriously, every normal person who receives a misdirected email either answers the sender – and only the sender – nice that there was probably an accident. Or look at the address details of the mail, where in this case he would have discovered the mailing list [email protected].
Then he would recognize the small mistake immediately and simply not refer to the mail at all, but let the whole thing rest. Anyone who still answers everyone has obviously not done either.
As a bystander, you can watch what is happening in fascination and learn a lot about your colleagues in the process. Not only many names and business areas that were previously unknown, but also various character traits. There are those who only mean well and want to help. There are those who have absolutely no desire for unnecessary communication with their colleagues. There are those who see the whole thing as a tremendous impertinence. The ones that suddenly only write in red capital letters. The pranksters. The Nothing Checker. This is sociologically quite interesting.
It has to be fun, not malice
You can find that annoying, or amazing, or funny. Gladly all of it. But what is not possible: malice towards the “polluter”. Someone accidentally sent an email to the wrong distributor – goodness, that happens to the best.
And if the whole rest of the team weren’t as unstoppable in their irrationality as a horde of 14-year-olds used to be before a Backstreet Boys concert, then it would be too one Email stayed. As it is, however, you ponder and delete one message after the other until your index finger strikes – and you look forward to the whole thing happening to someone again next year.