The Inbox Ignoramus

Tell me, how in the world do people with absolutely zero technical clue get hired by one of the largest software companies in the world?

Today, I parked my butt in my Kyphosis-inducing office chair to stare blankly at my monitor for another day. But this day was unusual: I had well over 1,000 email messages in my box on a thread regarding our company’s ESPP. Apparently, employees realized enormous “phantom gains” on the stock due to hold times while eating from the employee-stock buffet, and the perky IRS hostess just handed them the bill.

I wish my waistline were “phantom gains”. That way I’d be happy that at least I could blame someone else for global warming.

Now, as far as the email thread goes, this kind of inbox barf-o-rama happens from time to time. I use mutt as my mail reader, and deleting all the replies to a thread which I know I have no interest in is as easy as pressing “o, t, shift-D”. That means “order by thread, then delete the thread”. Yeah, it’s nerdy, but so am I, and so are a lot of other people. Fact is, the nerds won. Deal with it.

Anyway, one of our staffers sent out a very politely-worded email. He explained:

1. How to remove yourself from a mailing list.
2. The proper use of “reply” versus “reply all”. Basically, “don’t reply-all unless you have something useful to contribute to the discussion.
3. A reiteration of “don’t click reply-all unless you want to make yourself look like an idiot in front of 5,000 people.”

His articulate, carefully-worded, brief email elicited the following responses, replied to all:

“remove me” “remove me too” “take me off of this list” “If you want to be removed from this list, this is something you have to do yourself. Log into [our email management tool]… and unsubscribe yourself from the list. Please stop replying back to this list, it is going out to 1000s of mailboxes.” “REMOVE ME IMMEDIATELY!!!” “please remove me from your list asap”

One intelligent response… which basically told them what the original email told them in the first place. Apparently people everywhere see what they want to see, and nothing more.

Where are reading skills? Maybe they need a job with a little less technical focus? Or maybe some good old-fashioned hard work skills. I mean, I know not everybody can have a great job, but come on, if you’re going to work for a software company, don’t have crappy email skills. It’s not like a thousand random emails are going to make you declare email bankruptcy and delete everything to start over.

That’s my rant for the day. Thank you.