Friday, April 29, 2011

Reply All...Revisited

I wrote last summer about the negatives associated with hitting that innocent looking reply all button...Aside from totally junking up my in-box and making my blackberry choke on the download, sharing with everyone can cause emotional damage....last summer i was outed for not participating in an event via a 'replay all' thread....I actually tried to respond the old fashioned way...land line to land line...i made contact with the reply all offender...when i hung up the phone i thought she and i had an understanding...but her response did not end there...she could not resist  an impulse click on that pesky  reply all button, which in turn distributed her venom to the original group email...she let everyone know that i was out and thus our committee needed a hero...oooyyyy...imagine how i felt...embarrassed and totally pissed off...bad combo platter in cyber land....but i restrained from having a reply all button battle and spared the group the my email and the misery of reading my retort!

Reply All is the popularity scale of pop culture...its the see how many people in the To: line i can tell about all of my activities....

             DING there is goes again..."Sorry I can't get out of work that day"

 DING..."I am on jury duty...sorry"

Reply All lets everyone know how important you and your husband are and what the family is up to
...
                                              DING..."oh we are out of the country...could you please reschedule?"

okay so this person now has added a double wamy...she is traveling and wants all of us pedestrians to reschedule for her...really...was she at the Royal Wedding today...well if not we are not rescheduling for less the royalaness...
                     DING...oooyyyy, enough already...this one is a response to an email bday party invitation letting all of the invitees know the details of said responders family's weekend plans so that we all know why the twins will come late to and leave early from the bday party...

Please people this is too much information to share...i would rather a direct correspondence letting me know that you have your period and you're cranky...i might laugh and send you a winky face...or that you and your husband have a wild weekend planned...to this i might send you a naughty winky face...i might even tolerate some email diarrhea about your kids plans for the weekend and your evening and how come you can't be where you are supposed be and how that is now my problem...blah, blah, blah...to this i might respond with a pithy...'oh so interesting'...but you don't need to communicated any of this information in a GROUP EMAIL...group emails alerts are the year 2011s cover your ass memo...with one exception...if the sender is trying to coordinate with all parties and explicitly asks for a reply all...then we all need to suck it up ;-)

...so please stop carelessly clicking replay all...i won't be confused as to why you are or are not attending an event...if i like you enough i might even ask you how come you were not there...and funny if you are actually my friend we might have even discussed your plans and i would have known in advance.

...as my father always said...don't talk...or in the case email...just to hear yourself...speak when you have something important to say...

1 comment:

Tammi said...

Yes, one does need to be careful..those chains can bury you or a friendship (only if it was not true to begin with). Careful out there:)
Though I must confess I find some of the reply all rantings to be somewhat entertaining, but that's just me....