Another Reason I Don't Understand People

Email. Nearly everyone in the world has or has access to an email address, and most of those people have been using it long enough to get a misdirected email or two. Not spam, mind you, but just an email that went the wrong direction. It's an innocent enough problem, and a misdirecte email is nothing to get bent out of shape over. Really.

Well, on Friday, I got a random email having to do with some kind of approval. I glanced at the addresses on it, and found that it was directed to a group email that I logically would belong to, and whoever replied to this email managed to reply to a huge list across the organization instead of whoever they needed to reply back to. This isn't the first time that this has happened, but what's weird is the chaos that comes out of these misdirections is always the same.

The first part is logical enough. Person sends reply to the entire organization (whoops), and someone from within the organization (often in that person's area, by the sound of it) replies stating that they needed to reply to whoever or that they shot the email off the wrong way or something. That should be the end of it...but it isn't.

Enter three days of replies like this: "I am receiving these emails in error. Please remove my name from the mailing list." And then a handful of following emails that say "me too." This set of emails gets followed up by someone stating the obvious: "The email was sent in error. Please disregard." Is that the end? Nope.

You see, people don't read their emails starting with the last reply. They either start at the beginning or somewhere in the middle. They also don't read the email string to the end before replying to it. Hence, after this email of "please stop replying," we get a renewed round of "Take me off the list" emails, because all these people see is a bunch of replies to an email string they don't want to be a part of.

So today, after an even longer string of "please remove my name" emails, another email was sent saying "everyone got this in error, just disregard it." Not a minute after that email, came another "remove me email." And they're still coming. There was only one single email about the issue and one more stating that it was misdirected. Every subsequent email has been about people asking to remove themselves, and if they would just stop replying, it would be over with.

Finally, enter the last email today where someone has repsonded yet again telling everyone to not reply all, and adding to the mix that people have been sending emails that they are frustrated with all the emails. That makes me laugh because these people are perpetuating the situation themselves by replying all to the email string. They are sending emails to get something done about the emails they're receiving, and those emails are saying stop the emails even though they would have stopped the emails themselves if they never replied to them to begin with. Pretty whacked, if you ask me.

I just don't understand where these people come from or why they were allowed to touch a computer. I mean, on the one hand, the level of tunnel vision is amusing, but really, they need to stop hitting "reply all."