Reply All, Why Do People Do This?

"ranwhenparked" (ranwhenparked)
10/30/2020 at 12:15 • Filed to: None

British multinational company, so British multinational car ad

We’ve all been there. Someone sends out a simple email to the whole organization, someone asks a question back, but hits reply all. Now, I’m stuck in an endless chain of people from around Europe and North America constantly reiterating to the question asker what she did wrong, and also reiterating to each other that they should all stop replying to all. My phone’s binging every 30 seconds.

Why does this keep happening? Email has been a feature of the workplace for at least 30 years, I’d figure we’d all know how to use it by now. This has been an issue at every company I’ve ever worked for.

People are dumb.

DISCUSSION (40)

MM54 > ranwhenparked
10/30/2020 at 12:30

It’s us ually pretty annoying, but (at least where I work) there is now and then a real gem of a comedy that unfolds to the whole office or comapny .

facw > ranwhenparked
10/30/2020 at 12:31

They are super amusing when they are happening to someone else though. The real question is why email clients even let you send a reply to large groups? It’s not very likely to be useful, and for the rare cases where it would be, it’s not much of a burden to send out a new email to the recipient list.

The Snowman > ranwhenparked
10/30/2020 at 12:33

This happened to my employer a couple years ago and all the replies crashed email for most of the company. We are one of the largest banks in the world. This took multiple days to resolve.

BaconSandwich is tasty. > The Snowman
10/30/2020 at 12:40

It hit Microsoft way back in the day. https://rodneymbliss.com/2013/10/17/i-survived-bedlam3/#:~:text=See%2C%20Bedlam%20DL3%20was%20one%20of%20four%20Bedlam,Server%20security%20groups%2C%20and%20as%20general%20catch-all%20groups.

Thomas Donohue > ranwhenparked
10/30/2020 at 12:41

My favorite ‘Reply All’ messages are the ones that say “stop replying to all”, especially if each one triggers an ‘Out of Office’ flood of responses.

Kinja'd!!!

ranwhenparked > Thomas Donohue
10/30/2020 at 12:44

I haven't had a loop like that, but about half of them are the "stop doing this" kind, including one from our CEO that nobody seems to be noticing.

ranwhenparked > facw
10/30/2020 at 12:45

Maybe Clippy should pop up first - I see you're about to reply to all, are you sure you want to do that?

onlytwowheels > ranwhenparked
10/30/2020 at 12:45

I shut my phone off last Friday after something similar. A group text that really didn’t involve me, and the bickering between 2 employees that ensued, causing management to step in. It started before noon, and went on for hours. My phone was turned off before 1:00 pm and I didn’t turn it back on until later that evening. I missed more than 40 texts that I didn’t need to see anyways.

Long_Voyager94 > ranwhenparked
10/30/2020 at 12:45

People are dumb?

These are probably the same people who “reply all” to text messages instead of replying to sender.....

Arrivederci > ranwhenparked
10/30/2020 at 12:46

Happens at my company too. We just went through a merger and the last example of this happened right as they were announcing reduction-in-force. I suggested that we fire everyone who replied.

E90M3 > Long_Voyager94
10/30/2020 at 12:48

Isnt that sort of the point of group texts?

ranwhenparked > onlytwowheels
10/30/2020 at 12:48

God, that’s so asinine. Why can’t people just look, see it was sent by mistake, and ignore it and go on with their lives? The first time I encountered this was when I was with the BSA, and some hapless cashier at a local Scout Shop down south clicked the wrong distribution list and sent a question about hours to every employee in the country. Went on for days, responses were still popping up l ike 72 hours later

facw > ranwhenparked
10/30/2020 at 12:49

Heh. But I’m not sure how much that helps. I think the problem is less with people accidentally replying all, and more with people who don’t think it matters that they are emailing hundreds of people (or even who consider that a positive).

ranwhenparked > Arrivederci
10/30/2020 at 12:51

It could be a good intelligence test.

Also, telling employees that a CDC study shows that people who's hands are larger than their face are immune to COVID. I had exactly one staff member fall for that in the office, and it was exactly who I expected.

Long_Voyager94 > E90M3
10/30/2020 at 12:55

Not when someone sends a picture to a bunch of people then everyone else replies all instead of replying to sender......

VincentMalamute-Kim > ranwhenparked
10/30/2020 at 12:56

I have a question. Does “Don’t hit reply all” apply to personal emails?

Someone will send an email to a bunch of friends/acquaintances and I’ll “reply all” thinking I want to initiate a discussion and it’ll be a fun interaction with everyone. No one ever replies.

I understand the issue with business emails. But I’m com mitting a faux pas doing this with personal emails and I haven’t figured it out yet ?

ranwhenparked > VincentMalamute-Kim
10/30/2020 at 13:05

If you genuinely want everyone to be able to read your message, reply all is fine for both personal and business use when used correctly, that’s why the feature exists (eg, CEO sends out a mass email but misses something, COO points out the mistake and gets told to send a correction out to everyone with reply all, etc)

Its when you're only trying to respond to the original sender, and accidentally send your irrelevant personal stuff to everybody that it's a problem. And when you try to correct a person who did that by also sending your correction to everybody.

Just Jeepin' > onlytwowheels
10/30/2020 at 13:17

Via M essages on iPhone, at least, you can mute a conversation. I’ve had to do that when my family gets chatty.

kanadanmajava1 > ranwhenparked
10/30/2020 at 13:19

We had a related incident at my current workplace many many years ago. It happened before I joined but the incident is still known widely . This happened when the email servers weren’t yet very efficient in data management and attachment sizes w ere usually very small.

One lady had cat that had made a bunch of cute kittens. The lady decided to ask through the company email if people would like to adopt the kittens. She took couple of pictures of the kittens and sent the email too all people in the company. She managed to take very high resolution pictures in very space consuming file format. T he email server still acc ep ted their size as sensible limits hadn’t been set . The email server then individually sent 3500 emails with the huge pictures to each employee.

The email server started struggling after couple of cat enthusiasts replied to all re sendin g the huge kitten pictures. The kittens were super cute so the amount of replies was fairly high. The email server did ran out of disk space and many messages got stuck in the outbox. This episode took down the whole email system for couple of days. Which wasn’t a very good thing in a technology oriented company.

facw > VincentMalamute-Kim
10/30/2020 at 13:20

Reply all is fine if you actually want to reply to everyone, and it’s reasonable that everyone might want to read you message. The reply all storm problem really is only major when you have dozens or hundreds of people on the email. For personal emails with family and friends, it’s fine.

415s30 W123TSXWaggoIIIIIIo ( •_•))°) > ranwhenparked
10/30/2020 at 13:20

My mother gets into group texts around holidays and she just keeps including me, I don’t care what my cousin is saying to her!

ibRAD > ranwhenparked
10/30/2020 at 13:23

Ha. It’s a co-worker’s last day today and she just sent out an email to everyone thanking them for their support/goodbye etc. I expect to receive several well-wishes in my inbox.

facw > Long_Voyager94
10/30/2020 at 13:24

I mean, I’m curious to see my friends’ reactions in those situations. Seems to be sort of the point of a group of friends that you care about each other.

longtimelurkingtdiguy > ranwhenparked
10/30/2020 at 13:25

If you're on Outlook (it's probably on others as well) there is an ignore function which will send all future responses in the chain directly to the trash without a notification. It doesn't fix the problem, but it makes it easy to ignore.

haveacarortwoorthree2 > ranwhenparked
10/30/2020 at 13:36

Because of my rule #1.

Rule #1: People are stupid.

ranwhenparked > 415s30 W123TSXWaggoIIIIIIo ( •_•))°)
10/30/2020 at 13:39

My parents love those. I got “Amazon package just dropped on porch” from my dad the other day, pretty sure he meant it for my mom who’s WFH and can’t always hear the door bell from her office. At least, I assume I wasn’t supposed to go get it, they’re about 100 miles from me. There were at least 4 other contacts on the text.

WasGTIthenGTOthenNOVAnowbacktoGTI > ranwhenparked
10/30/2020 at 13:39

People want to project the appearance that they are being productive. It’s an easy way to show a bunch of people at the same time that you’re working.

It is, of course, a facade, and no one is ever productive ever for any amount of time ever never.. .

WasGTIthenGTOthenNOVAnowbacktoGTI > onlytwowheels
10/30/2020 at 13:41

I’m part of enough group texts that this is an actual problem for me, lol.

ranwhenparked > WasGTIthenGTOthenNOVAnowbacktoGTI
10/30/2020 at 13:44

Could be, with so many people working from home, and much of my company working in the field normally, the traditional methods of faking being busy (sitting at your desk with your tie loosened and rubbing your eyes, or walking around the office briskly while holding a file or c lipboard and shaking your head) no longer work.

WasGTIthenGTOthenNOVAnowbacktoGTI > ranwhenparked
10/30/2020 at 13:46

My move was to always have some paperwork in my hand. No matter where I was or what I was doing (or not doing), I carried paperwork. Works like a charm.

Luckily, I’m self employed now so I only have to lie to myself about my productivity.

This is what we'll show whenever you publish anything on Kinja: > ranwhenparked
10/30/2020 at 13:49

The initial sender should have BCC'd everyone.

ranwhenparked > WasGTIthenGTOthenNOVAnowbacktoGTI
10/30/2020 at 13:53

That works, too. And you have to look annoyed all the time. I spent hours practicing my annoyed expression.

12and35 > ranwhenparked
10/30/2020 at 14:04

This is why the only person I work with who has my phone number or email is my roommate. All I need is what time I work, if you need me to come in early, and every one else is okay. That’s all I need from you.

E90M3 > Long_Voyager94
10/30/2020 at 14:28

In that case, it’s generally relevant to everyone and then everyone get to see all the responses. At least that’s how it works for me. I know it was annoying before I had a smart phone and it couldn’t do group texts.

Just Jeepin' > This is what we'll show whenever you publish anything on Kinja:
10/30/2020 at 14:30

Bcc is a superpower. I’ve long since given up trying to explain it to various non-profits I’ve interacted with. “Really, you don’t need to share my email address with everyone else on your list.”

flatisflat > ranwhenparked
10/30/2020 at 15:28

The ‘Reply All’ epidemic is the perfect illustration of how dangerous it is to just allow people to internet all willy-nilly unregulated. We are, at large, still morons.

Which leads me to my bigger point that the internet is a near perfect example of actual, true-to-form democratic discourse, and the cesspool it is is the exact reason no country should be one.

Long_Voyager94 > facw
10/30/2020 at 15:49

I’m curious to see my friends reactions, sure. I’m not curious to hear the reactions of 15 other people I’ve never met who happen to also be on that text....

facw > Long_Voyager94
10/30/2020 at 16:00

Fair enough. Really depends on the text I guess. I don’t have that sort of group text, the broadly distributed stuff is on Facebook.

Long_Voyager94 > facw
10/30/2020 at 16:10

I get friends send me and all their friends pics of something they’re working, then the rest of the night I get to see responses from everyone I don’t know. Usually, no big deal, sometimes even have a short convo with them, but sometimes it’s like “Come on”!

ITA97, now with more Jag @ opposite-lock.com > WasGTIthenGTOthenNOVAnowbacktoGTI
10/30/2020 at 19:28

This was in important lesson I learned early on in the USMC. Always carry a clipboard. If for some reason you have to leave your hiding spot and walk through a hallway or common area, or god forbid enter the admin office, a clipboard was the only reliable way to not get swept up into doing something unpleasant and unnecessary by a passing SNCO.