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:
October 30th, 2007
Nerd time
Ugh. Where does everybody go during the week? Don’t you know it’s during the week that you’re supposed to fuck around on the internet the most…because who wants to actually work? One can only read Perez Hilton and I Can Has Cheezburger so many times in a day.
Other than completely exhausting my sources of entertainment on the interwebs, I have been preoccupying myself with Harry Potter. I finished Prisoner of Azkaban last night–and it was all kinds of wonderful goodness! I’ve discovered a few things while reading the Harry Potter books. First, I don’t know why I didn’t read them before; they’re totally up my ally. Second, I sure do have a shitterific memory. I didn’t remember crap from the movies while reading the books, which, I think is turning out to be a good thing. I didn’t remember at all about the time traveling! The whole time with Hermione, I couldn’t remember why she was able to go to all those classes.
I’ve been re-watching the movies after I finish the book. So this weekend I’ll watch the Prisoner of Azkaban movie. And now I’m reading the Goblet of Fire. Good times. I’ll be sad when I’m done with these books now! Andy says Prisoner of Azkaban is his favorite, and I can see why after finishing it. I like it the best so far. But we’ll see if it’s still my favorite after reading all seven.
In other news, I have no other news because I’m rather bored. I could be working on I Woke Up LA right now, but I don’t much feel like it. Eh, we’ll see.
Three cookies to who can spot the song with lyrics mentioned in this post’s title. The song reminds me of being 18 and driving around in my old red Acura doing incredibly stupid and bad 18 year-old things. Nine years ago! Insanity. Good times. Hint: Why don’t you get the fuck out of my face?! NOW!
October 21st, 2007
Nerd time
Really, the only thing I did this weekend was play SimCity 4. The game has grown on me quite a bit. It’s a lot more challenging that the previous versions of the game–and perhaps that’s an understatement. Actually, it’s kind of funny, because there are several aspects of the game that are more like City Life. Such as how when you zone, the zones auto-fit themselves with streets. Which is nice and incredibly annoying at the same time. And due to the way I’ve always played SimCity 2000 and 3000, this provides me with a big challenge. I would always make zones of specific sizes with specific spaces between for parks and subway/bus stops; doing that with the way SimCity 4 zones is not practical.
Plus the monthly costs of everything is more like City Life. But that’s not so bad. The regional idea and making neighbor cities to fit in is interesting, but I rather like it. I’ve gotten a lot better since it’s all I’ve been doing recently. Though I’ve yet to make a successful city with awesome high-density yet. I’m working on it. Haha.
All night, while playing SimCity and doing laundry (grumble), I’ve been listening to the Once More, With Feeling Buffy episode soundtrack, which I purchased off Amazon at the same time I got SimCity 4 (so I could get free shipping–haha, brilliant). I actually downloaded it several years ago, but decided to buy it, and I’m glad I did. I don’t think that episode or the silly songs from it will ever get old. Of course, neither will the show. I’m not even usually one to ga-ga over musicals. But man, this one is just an over-abundance of guilty pleasures. And the CD came with a few bonuses at the end that I adore. Like the creepy suite from the Hush episode. Gah, Buffy really was a brilliant show. I miss it. Joss needs to get another show now. And it needs to not be on CW, Fox or UPN where it will get canceled. >:|
Read the rest of this entry »
October 15th, 2007
Nerd time
The more time goes by, the more I hate IE 6. And the longer IE 7 has been out, the more I hate that people still use IE 6. Though, I guess in some circumstances, users can’t upgrade to IE 7. But damn it, they can use a different browser for the love of God!
I just finished going through and making my IE 6 style sheet to make my site not look ridiculous in that stupid out-dated POS browser that apparently half the population still uses. At first, I wasn’t going to accommodate IE 6 users, because I tried to tell myself that if they’re going to use crap, then they deserve to look at crap too. But, sigh, I caved in anyway and made a bunch of shitty GIF versions of little transparent PNGs.
At work, it doesn’t bother me quite as much to accommodate for ridiculously out of date browsers, but then, that’s a much different environment than the one I have for this little pleasure site here.
I think I’m just impatient. I’ve been having to deal with IE 6’s crap for so many years now…and now that IE 7 has been out a little while, I’m just ready for IE 6 to be gone. Even though I know that is truly a long, long time away from actually happening.
I wish somebody made a “virus” of sorts that infected only IE 6 or lower users, in that it inhibits them from viewing any website at all, except for those that link to downloads of modern browser alternatives. And if they don’t do it after a while, they get flooded with the goatse picture (don’t worry, it’s just a wiki article) for all eternity! Ha. I am obviously being ridiculous, but you know, that would totally make my year.
And I blame coming across a comic from xkcd for putting goatse in my head for the first time in years. This comic could not be more accurate for me and my college forum days, I kid you not. Though Andy pointed out that perhaps nostalgia is not the correct term in this case. I think I disagree; those days were pretty funny.