The reason why we can't have flying cars

[Platapus]

This is happening as I am typing this.


This morning, I logged into my work E-mail system as I am, like a lot of people working from home. Life was good until about 0800.


Someone made a mistake. They sent out an E-mail inadvertently linked to a very large address group. We are talking about a few thousand people.



It was a simple E-mail and it was quite obvious that it was sent to people it should not have been sent to.


People started replying to this E-mail requesting that they be removed from the address group.... and naturally they used Reply All


Crikey! people are still too stupid to know the difference between reply and reply all. The E-mail chain is now up to several hundred, all saying the same thing "Please remove me from the address list" and EVERYONE is getting this E-mail.


But it gets worse


About 0830, some high ranking guy sent out an E-mail to the same list telling people not to Reply All to this and to just delete the E-mail


People are replying to this E-mail and using Reply All


Yes, in an E-mail that tells people not to respond Reply All is being responded using Reply All.


Now we have two E-mail chains now in a race. The first one is still ahead and looks like it will break 1K and the second is lagging behind with just over 100.


Are people really that stupid? Yes, I have data.... many hundreds of data indicating just that.



I hope this does not result in a denial of service on our E-mail server.



There is an easy fix for this.


Microsoft could remove the Reply All button from Outlook and instead have Reply All put on a pull down menu. There are opportunities where Reply All is needed, but it should require a separate action.


People can not be trusted with a Reply All button!!


Sigh.



I am trying to figure out how to tell Outlook not to make a sound when I get a new E-mail as my computer is bonging almost non stop. The problem is that I do get actual work related E-mails that I need to reply to (not reply all).


Life would be so much easier if it were not for people.

[Jimbuna]

Well I suppose stupid is as stupid does

[vienna]

Kind of reminds me of a company I once worked for; they had just gone through a buyout by a larger company and there was a serious disconnect between the older staff, the newer staff, and the newly combined management; some new executive decided there were far too many memos going around and issued a memo calling for an end to the volume of memos circulating; without the tool of the memos, staff members started to hold ad hoc meetings to get business and make decisions; this entailed significant portions of the staff, at any given time, to be away from their desks, attending meetings; this did not sit well with the new management and a staff meeting was called to notify everyone to stop having so many meetings, which caused the employees to ask the management how they were to communicate and collaborate with each other; their response?...


"Well, you could write memos..."...





<O>

[Platapus]

It got even better.


Later yesterday morning, Some techie posted, to the entire list, the steps to make an Outlook rule that would automatically place all these hundreds of replies directly into your deleted folder so you would never see them


Yeah


People started replying all to this message too.


All totaled we had three separate threads with people replying all to a list of thousands.


People are stupid. Some may be less stupider, but all are stupid.

[Catfish]

Originally Posted by Platapus

It got even better.

Later yesterday morning, Some techie posted, to the entire list, the steps to make an Outlook rule that would automatically place all these hundreds of replies directly into your deleted folder so you would never see them [...]

Any idea how absolutely "fast" MS's Exchange server and any backup will run with millions of eMails in the bin
I will not be a happy system administrator !!

[Sailor Steve]

Originally Posted by Platapus

People are stupid. Some may be less stupider, but all are stupid.

Yes I am! The people I play games with (The kind you play at the local game store, not the kind you play at home on the computer) include a small group who include some of the people who created the game in the first place. If we want to talk about next week's game we use 'Reply All'. If we are discussing changes in the rules we still use 'Reply All', but it's a much smaller "All". I one of us wants to discuss anything personal it's "Reply".

I consider myself a computer idiot, but even I got that one the first time. Of course everybody I know who makes more money than I do seems to be stupider than I am. Is that some sort of job requirement?

[mapuc]

1. I have always known how to reply to one person and reply to all.

2. Flying cars-if and when we have the possibility to buy and fly one of these, they will be fully automatic-no thinking is needed.

Markus

[vienna]

Originally Posted by Catfish

Any idea how absolutely "fast" MS's Exchange server and any backup will run with millions of eMails in the bin
I will not be a happy system administrator !!

Um,... yes,... I actually do know how "absolutely "fast" MS's Exchange server and any backup will run" clogged with emails: one of the last places I worked merged with another corporation and, after the merger was finalized, I was tasked with moving all the emails related to the merger either to or from principals who had worked directly on the merger teams for my corporation and who left after the merger (voluntarily or 'forced'); I found out that a very large number of those persons had the habit of never clearing out their inboxes and they also had the habit of sendting emails and not trimming out the previous texts of the originating message and/or the responses, so, as time went on each email message had an ever increasing 'tail' of prior communications text appended to the bottom of each succeeding message; the increase in the size of space taken up by each email was exponential; the problem with archiving emails in publicly traded corporations is there are laws, both Federal and State, mandating the preservation of all correspondence not only related to the merger, but of anything that might possibly be of import should there be any future investigations or litigation (I had a very enlightening conversation with a couple of persons from the Legal Dept. on just how far reaching those laws and regulations are)...

My Director asked me one day about the progress of my task and I informed him I believed the transfer should be done after hours and, preferably over a weekend; he didn't like that idea (overtime, etc.), so he ordered me to start the transfer to the archive servers immediately; I warned him the results could be unpleasant, but he wanted action now; I went to my PC and initiated the transfer...

About an hour in, I got a very angry call from the IT administrator demanding to know what I was doing on my station; it seemed the huge flood of emails had spiked the server banks and had brought the system to a snail's crawl and their investigation of the cause haled them to my IP address ; I explained what was being done and he demanded that I cease the transfer immediately; I put him on hold, went to my Director office and told him someone wanted to talk to him...

I must say I rather enjoyed looking through the window of the Director's office from my cubicle and seeing him get all flustered as he got a telephonic dressing down...





<O>