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Seattle, WA, United States
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Wednesday, March 4, 2009

Why Reply All is the Devil

So someone at work today decided to send out an email and it somehow got the entire company (lets just say around 1000 people) receiving the message. It almost took down the mail server today. All of my "real" mail took about 30 minutes to get to me. Not that I'm a whiny techno-bitch that takes the internet for granted, but it did generate some amazing comments as the reply-alls started piling up. Basically what happened here was that people sent their message and then it didn't get posted for 15 mins. In that 15 mins, a bunch of people also replied. Hilarity ensues! Here is a select few of the responses that came through (in rough order of received time, from sane to ridiculous):
  • "To Whom it may concern:
    I know that I wasn’t supposed to get this notification. However, I am just concerned that I got it INSTEAD of a required recipient. So this is just a note to let you know that someone might not have gotten the notice."
  • "Can we stop with the reply all he sent a cancellation"
  • "I should not have received this as well"
  • "STOP REPLYING ALL TO THIS MESSAGE. YOU WILL SEVERELY IMPACT THE PERFORMANCE OF OUR EMAIL SERVER." (this was sent reply-all)
  • "Unsubscribe" (it starts)
  • "Ah, I’m on here too"
  • "DO NOT HIT REPLY ALL ANYMORE!"
  • "No seriously. Stop “replying all” everyone."
  • "While we’re spamming on the topic, I receive a good deal of emails I believe I shouldn’t. Is this a good place to mention it?"
  • "Unsubscribe……Please"
  • "Unsubscribe does not work. Please just stop replying"
  • "Sending 'unsubscribe' to everyone in the company will not actually unsubscribe you from the list"
  • "UNSUBSCRIBE DOES NOT WORK THAT WAY!"
  • http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comic_timing
  • "Please stop responding to this email. Read all the strings if you don’t understand what is going on"
  • "Unsub please." (Does this guy think just changing the wording will help?)
  • "Cease and desist replying all immediately please"
  • "Subscribe me, please"
  • "before everyone leaves the party, check out my band’s music video"
  • "Everyone has been officially unsubscribed. Please do not reply to this email for settings to take effect. Thanks"
Who says the workplace isn't fun?

UPDATE: Today someone posted graphs detailing the situation yesterday. Here is one that's probably safe to share:

4 comments:

  1. tzeentchlingMarch 4, 2009 at 9:34 PM

    Gawd, it reminds me of when that happened with the Berkeley undergrad server. So many messages of "unsubscribe me," "stop replying," "the unsubscribe button is at the bottom of the page, dumbass" and random stuff people would come up with, trying to make it a meme or something. "You have 200 unread messages!" :(

    ReplyDelete
  2. More TAZMarch 8, 2009 at 12:37 PM

    Reply All IS the devil...and your pie chart is the Awesome! :D

    ReplyDelete
  3. UnknownMarch 14, 2009 at 11:22 AM

    You're missing the best reply alls. Like "Subscribe me please" and "Just wanted to be a part of this epic thread. Check out my band on YouTube."

    ReplyDelete
  4. GL RulesMarch 19, 2009 at 6:23 PM

    Hellz yeah, the best is when people try and be funny and EPIC FAIL. I like the Comic Timing from Wiki. Classic.
    The worplace isn't fun. I said it.

    ReplyDelete

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