I worked for a Fortune 500 company in the 1990s. When the company first rolled-out email, and provided computers to many thousands of management and office staff, we would regularly see someone in a distant outpost in Malaysia, or India, or Eastern Europe hit “reply all” on a random email, sending it to everyone from the CEO on down
They would then get excoriated by some other random employee in another distant outpost, who would also send “reply all.”
It was quite funny - like some new form of electronic, global food fight. it happened fairly regularly in the first year.
Stopping it needed courses on “email use” and limiting global access to email directories for a lot of local offices.
5. Finally, this event proves the point that if you put a bunch of soldiers or officers of the same rank in one room (including generals), they will revert to acting like privates within 15 minutes.
How insulting to privates!
After exiting the Service in 96, I took a job with General Electric. One of my team in Connecticut thought I would fit in well with the “guys club” email distribution he set up. He went to add me to the limited distribution, but my name was right below Entire General Electric Western Hemisphere. He inadvertently added it (instead of me) and sent the raunchiest joke I’ve ever read at work. Needless to say the entire company stopped for 5 minutes that day. Jack Welch could not be reached for comment…
This has happened in my command several times. The funniest ones are the high ranking professionals who also hit reply all to add to the chaos, while covering by saying “This is utterly unprofessional and jeopardizes the security of our Army information systems. Please desist responding to this and hitting reply all ASAP!” only to be followed by a hundred more similar emails. Not fun when you are trying to get a critical email out and the entire network is down.
I used to work with an internal auditor who did an intensely honest, independent audit of the Naval Nuclear Program. He had been working on it for several years and sent out the complete report to several very large distribution lists, including NAVSEA, as his last act on his retirement day. It didn’t take long for IT to delete it from every email account.
It was legendary. It was also somewhat effective. I noticed afterwards that some of his recommendations were actually implemented. Somebody, or a lot of somebody’s, read it.
In the 90’s we got a new E-mail system in Dept of Energy that would allowed us to forward work E-mail to our private E-mail accounts. Unfortunately, the first person to try it was my boss who mistakenly had his email sent to everyone on the system and worse he misspelled his private email address.
When he got an e-mail, it was sent to everyone and tried to sent it to the non-existing private e-mail address. The system sent him an e-mail that the address doesn’t exist. This e-mail went to everyone and tried to send to his non-existing private e-mail address. The local DOE system and his private e-mail provider where quickly swamped and shut down.
He never lived that down.
"...instead of replying like boomers using new technology."
This whiny little bitch wouldn't have email without Boomers. He'd still be instant messaging his pimply-faced junior high school buddies with AOL AIM.
But what were the unfamiliar sender's pronouns?
A nationwide recall was going on and I wanted to make sure that our supply was safe.
What followed was a comedy of epic proportions as I suddenly was looped in on a bunch of replies to all e-mail, most which had nothing to do with my request. The first day I replied to the flood by suggesting that they might want to remove my name from their future communication. After that I just let it run.
If they could not figure out how to have a private conversation it was no skin off my nose.
Especially when they were talking about how the product could be contaminated and they did not want to tell us.
We switched suppliers shortly there after.