Whether you're bad mouthing the CEO, commenting on Peggy from accounting's awful new haircut, or commenting on an intern's short skirt, one thing's for certain: don't reply all!
Why Doesn’t It?
“I worked for a media company that had recently launched a specialty tv channel. The communications department sent a press release out to the entire company (approx 2000 people) and a massive list of media contacts. The owner of the company replied to all ‘If it is so good why doesn’t it make any f**king money?’.” (Source)
“Forget About The 4th Sheet Guys”
“HR manager sent an Excel workbook with some pertinent info on the first sheet to everyone, but failed to remove the fourth sheet which had everybody’s salary.” (Source)
Yeah, Sure. An “Accident”
“There’s this woman here at work. Almost every time when the CEO sends an email to all staff announcing something new or good she replies to all, telling the CEO how good he is and how much she admires his work and dedication to make our company better. And just how much Jesus has blessed him and everyone working here. A few minutes later she replies to all again apologizing for that ‘mistake’ because that was intended just for him.” (Source)
“Butthole”
“I was doing some contracting work for an old friend. This involved handling the monthly billing. One client was very high maintenance and his charge didn’t go through this particular month. My friend and I are pretty laid back in our email exchange. Knowing someone for 20+ years will do that. So, I emailed my friend the following: Good morning! The billing went fine this morning except for that one butthole. Did you want to drop him a line or should I do it? Friend’s reply: Hey there. Damn, that really sucks about that butthole. You should send him a note reminding him that it’s not cool to be a butthole. Ha ha! In case you don’t have it, his email is __. You probably see where this is headed. My friend decided to look up this client’s email address by starting to type his name in the recipient field and promptly forgot to remove it before sending me his reply. Needless to say, the guy was NOT pleased. He lectured my friend for a while on ‘poor business practices’, but apparently he didn’t hold him accountable at all. I was the toxic employee who needed to be dropped immediately. He also wanted to schedule a conference call where he wanted me to explain myself and formally apologize to him. This didn’t happen, thankfully, and it’s funny recollecting the whole incident now, but it was pretty stressful at the time. We finished up the work and gave the guy his last month free.” (Source)
“Coochy Cream”
“There was an email floating around the office about some sort of event that someone was trying to organize. I can’t remember exactly what it was about, but this woman clearly thought she was only responding to her friend when she wrote, ‘I’ll tell you the coochy cream story later’.” (Source)
Wanker
“At the Head office of a large UK insurer, Adrian, the pugnacious, unpopular and unappealing contractor was showing Peter, a new programmer on his first day how to use cc:Mail. Peter is logged in, Adrian is next to him, typing. He decides on the following message Subject: Wanker Body: You are one. He shows Peter how to call up the address book and selects the first entry which happens to be ‘A-J Surnames’, couple of clicks and there it is in the to: box. He then states, explicitly, ‘better not click send!’ then, somewhat inexplicably, does that very thing. About 800 employees, including the CEO, almost simultaneously look up and start to loudly discuss exactly who this ‘Peter’ is and why he thinks they may have onanistic tendencies. Peter, rather unfairly, spent some uncomfortable time with both HR and the CEO, who was a ‘hands on’ type, to be sure. Ironically, Adrian, who indeed was a wanker of the most furious variety, didn’t receive said email as his initial was further down in the alphabet.” (Source)
The Reply All Avalanche
“A woman sent a retirement announcement inadvertently to the entire, tens-of-thousands strong agency I work for. People were hitting reply all to tell others not to reply all. It went on for hours.” (Source)
PLEASE DISREGARD
“Worked on a TV show that everyone except the creator hated, and everyone knew from the ratings would be canceled any second. I was working in legal, and on an email chain where a report of outstanding legal issues for the upcoming episode was sent to literally everyone you could think of (50+ people) ranging from me (one title above entry level) to the head of the network. A middling executive replied to all ‘they’re getting canceled and we still have to deal with this sh_t?’ To make matters worse, she attempted to RECALL the email, just drawing more attention to it, and then replied to all again ‘PLEASE DISREGARD LAST EMAIL, TRYING TO GENERATE AN INTERNAL REPORT FOR [MY DEPARTMENT], HIT THE WRONG BUTTON’ It was the ‘Hit the wrong button’ that sent me and my boss into hysterics. I so badly wanted to reply that we didn’t know there was a sh_t-talk button.” (Source)
What A Jerk
“I’m a teacher, and I am in a group chat with my fellow department members. This past school year, Person A lost his grandmother, whom he was very close with, a week before his wedding. He really wanted her to be there, and he was quite upset. Naturally, as a department, we threw around the idea of getting him a card and putting some money in it for him. The next day Person B, an ignorant, middle-aged woman who is terrible with technology, makes the mistake of replying to the group chat, instead of the person she was b*tching to. Her reply went something along the lines of: ‘This is ridiculous. I don’t have the money to give him. I have too much going on in my life right now and I really don’t need this. I’m not giving money.’ Meanwhile, this lady drives a brand spankin’ new Mercedes to school every day, and spends hundreds of dollars on her hair and nails a week (she brags about it often). Needless to say, Person A was extremely embarrassed, and the rest of us were pissed.” (Source)
The Exact Moment
“My first job out of school, my manager had to fire someone. The manager was pretty young, and it’s the first time he ever had to do this. He sends an email to HR for assistance and direction as to how to go about firing this person. Well, the issue became moot when he accidentally CC’d the guy who was going to be fired. We were able to actually see the moment that guy got the email…though we didn’t know what happened at the time. But we did see him stand up and storm over to the manager’s office.” (Source)
How To Bring Servers Down
“Worked at a large Fortune 100 company (~70k employees) a few years back. CEO sent out an email to ‘All Users’, then some f**kstick replys all with a comment back. The chain reaction of dimwits all clicking Reply All to say ‘Stop pressing reply all’ brought the email system to its knees for about 5 days.” (Source)
Maybe Texting Is A Better Idea
“My former coworker hit reply all on an email about a golf scramble. He tried forwarding it to another guy talking about seeing one of the new interns in a short golfing skirt. Notice I said ‘former’ coworker… Also, my team won the golf scramble if that matters.” (Source)
“Smells Like A Campfire”
“I clicked reply all instead of forward on accident. Long story short, one person out of 200 bank workers always showed up looking like he just rolled out of bed. messy hair, wrinkled clothes, etc. every day or two we’d get an e-mail from the lady cfo re-telling everyone that we need to maintain a professional appearance. Typed up something along the lines of ‘this b_tch looks like she shops at kmart and smells like a campfire and she’s telling others how to dress?’
within a few minutes I was sitting in front of her, HR, and the CEO about how to conduct myself in a professional environment. not much outside of a formal apology happened. actually probably helped since people there realized I wouldn’t BS them and told it like it was. Another one was when I worked at wells fargo (not really a mistake, but still good… fking awful place by the way). ~250k employees company wide, one kid who was a teller probably making $12 an hour received some promotional e-mail about how well the company did the past calendar year, how much of a bonus the CEO got (this was in 08-09), and basically saying the company made a billion dollars. this fking kid spends all day locating all the different groups in outlook that weren’t included on the company wide email so the e-mail would go to every one of the 250k employees and he more or less said ‘hey johnny (the ceo), I make less than 30k a year peddling your sh_tty products, why don’t you throw some of that $30MM my way you rich prick’. he wasn’t employed for very much longer.” (Source)
Umm, Wait What?
“My cousin once sent an email meant for his girlfriend to everyone in his address book. He wrote in great detail about the ways in which he and his brothers English bulldog were going to have sex with her when he got home. This probably happened 15 years ago, and I’m sure he has convinced himself that everyone has forgotten. Things like that stay forever.” (Source)
Date Night Debacle
“Babysitter wrote to my husband, my daughter, and I, about babysitting my granddaughter who was staying with us. My husband and I were going out on a date night. I was trying to respond to my husband ‘Come 7 o’clock…’ With a picture of my tits. Whelp… Basically she sexted my daughter and the babysitter.” (Source)
Quickest Way To Get Fired
“After an all staff announcement (around 2000 people) from the new CEO about an upcoming downsizing, one person replied to everyone shortly after saying:
‘Can you believe this sht Kate? This new CEO is such a fking c**nt, I swear if I see him on the street I’ll break his f**king neck’ As you can imagine, that’s threats of violence and taken pretty seriously. On the plus side though, she didn’t have to stress about the downsizing anymore because she was fired.” (Source)
Keep Em’ For Safekeeping
“My brother-in-law’s family decided to carry on the conversation on an email chain without removing my sister or brother-in-law from it. Topics discussed were my brother-in-law’s ineptitude in general and disdain for my sister. These are the people who have made overtures that in case my sister or brother-in-law cannot handle raising my nephew, that they’ll take over. I have the email in safekeeping if there is ever a custody battle.” (Source)