Plz take me off this list, kthx.
I’ve been posting about this on Twitter recently, but I finally decided to make a long post about it after just receiving another email just a few minutes ago. If you haven’t been following my Twitter, this is about an email group list train wreck that happened at work. I don’t normally like to go into much detail about work on the internet, but this series of events is too funny to pass up. So I’ll try to be as abstract as possible. 
I will start this by saying with few exceptions, the people I work with and the people I have met in the program are incredibly nice and intelligent. But I suppose teh internets gets the best of everyone now and then.
The entire debacle began on July 2, when a poor unsuspecting man emails the entire program asking for a bit of information about something not completely related to most people’s jobs, but not entirely out in left field either. I’m not entirely sure how large this email list is, but I would guess it’s several thousand at least, consisting of the entire program faculty and staff at the rather large university and centers across the state.
Anyway, within a few minutes a couple responses start trickling in from people trying to help this guy. Honestly, I wasn’t too happy with it myself, seeing as this topic did not concern me in the slightest bit and the emails were slightly disruptive. However, like most sane people, I just ignored them and assumed they would stop discussing this topic with the entire email list soon.
Well, the emails kept coming, and while at first I just send them straight to the trash without glancing, I finally decided something must be going on if we’re still getting these. Sure enough, I opened the most recent one, which consisted of a reply stating “Please take me off this list,” followed by other responses such as “I do not want to receive any more emails about this topic” and “Take me off too,” and escalating in frustration to things such as “TAKE ME OFF THIS LIST PRONTO!!!!”
These silly requests are then of course followed by “Please stop emailing the entire list asking to be taken off the list.” To which more people replied: “Please take me off this list.” Which then triggered, “I cannot believe you people” and “STOP BOMBARDING OUR EMAILS!!!!!!”
For God’s sake. First, how do you not notice you’re emailing the entire list with this silly request to be taken off the list, escalating the problem you had exponentially? Second, are you even looking at the email subjects you respond to? I shit you not, the email subject line would read “Stop emailing the entire list asking to be taken off,” and people (many!) would respond to that message in particular asking to be taken off. It even got to the point where we received multiple emails from IT staff explaining that you should NOT send replies to the whole group like this, detailed instructions on how you should respond, etc, and people still did not listen.
These messages continued on through the next day. Then of course, we had a long weekend–thank God–otherwise, I truly believe these would have continued at this ridiculous pace. I don’t remember getting anymore emails about this topic yesterday, but just now, I received one last one. Unfortunately, a lot of the previous emails were retracted and deleted from our systems (which makes me very angry, because I planned on saving this moment of awesome in my archives for all time), but this one I can quote you directly (and photo-document on flickr).
Subject: Re: Please stop bombarding our emails asking to take you off the list!!!!!
Body:
dito!
>>> Ms. Name Removed 7/3/2008 12:33 PM >>>
Please do not include me on your e-mailing about the [subject removed]….Much Thanks!!
Yes, this person actually replied with “ditto” and yes, it was not even spelled right. And yes, that truly was the bloody subject line.
Is there an Aggie joke to be made somewhere? Perhaps. People never cease to amaze me. I will say this though: not everyone was completely oblivious. My favorite response to all of this came from one guy stating “Please keep me on the list, I want to keep getting email requests from people asking to be taken off the list. It’s fun!”
I agree with him. It was fun; reaching new levels of stupid fun, but fun none the less.
Some amusing examples of this happening elsewhere:
I wud of ignored it too how annoying i’m always getting emails from random things most of them are advertising since i always join websites for no reason lol
cya
GaBz
I swear I’ll never stop loving you Jac! You are the queen of Cyber humor and enjoyment! Have a long but sweet week my fav red head gal! *Muah!*
first of all, who the hell spells ditto wrong? And second of all, i agree that it’s kind of fun to get stupid e-mails like that just to say something stupid back. (Heeheeheeheehee). But it also gets tedious.
This would have cracked me up. I remember when I worked for the state we had a similar situation. I didn’t have email there, but my mom did and my supervisor always printed off important emails for the temps. Anyway, someone had a baby, so they emailed EVERYONE to tell them. Which isn’t a big deal, except that then EVERYONE replied to the whole list to tell them congratulations. And this person was probably not even seeing the emails anyway, since they were gone for maternity.
The internet seems like a magnifying glass for stupidity sometimes.
FAIL
LMAO! This Stuff Is Too Damn Funny Jaclyn! You Gave Me A Good Laugh For Today! That One Guy That Requested To Be Kept On The List Is Hilarious! This Is Why I Love Reading Your Blog, You Always Have Something Awesome Going On In Your Life!^_^
~Celeste
I read up on this situation from that funny site you linked on twitter.. and I laughed my arse off THEN. I keep wondering if this would ever happen to us at the hospital, but I still CAN’T BELIEVE how people can reply to the WHOLE damn list and NOT notice! It baffles me. I have NEVER NEVER NEVER hit reply to all. I can’t even think of a legit reason that I would have ever had to reply to every a person sent an email to… it’s just crazy. Oh my… I think I would have wanted to send an email to all the people stupid enough to do it with some crazy internet scam – like that British Lottery one I keep getting … /sigh
Nahhhh.. I’m not really that mean…. >)
*LMAO* Aren’t people funny? You tell them NOT to do something and low and behold…they do just that! Its always amusing how grown adults can revert to acting like grade-schoolers out of nowhere. The whole “dito” thing had me ROTF. Hahahahaha!
lol. people can be so stupid some times. and i loved that comic about the timezones. very funny.
My favorite part was the one guy who responded something like, “Please keep me on this list, this is fun!”
When is the newest IWLA going 2b done?
Very nice!!