Pony Rides at 4:00

Email is a very powerful tool. I'm not sure who invented it which is kind of surprising don't you think? It seems like that kind of invention would make you pretty famous. My sister insists it's this guy she plays tennis with but I've yet to verify that. Either way it's a very useful tool and it's kind of hard to think about how much it's changed how we communicate. As of late I've been realizing how dangerous this tool can be especially in the work environment. No other tool gives everyone endless opportunities to make complete idiots of themselves.

First let me begin by discussing the annoying and inappropriate use of the "reply to all" button. This button is a very powerful one and one that should be used judiciously. I honestly think that anytime you hit the "reply to all" button there should be a secondary warning like "Are you sure you want to reply to ALL?" The problem is that there seems to be a group of very clueless individuals who can't seem to find the simple "reply" button. Like when an email goes out to all employees announcing something like "There will be a quarterly business update next Wednesday at 1:00 PM" and invariably one or more peons reply to all with some sort of useless message like "Thanks Jim see you at 1:00". Seriously, Jim doesn't care and I care even less than Jim so quit cluttering my inbox and get back to work. Another example of the inappropriate use of the "reply to all" button happened a while ago when I invited a bunch of people from work over to my place for a get together. I invited about 25 or so people via email. In the email I gave details about date and time and other relevant information. I sarcastically mentioned that the event would "kick off around 4:00PM with pony rides and a marching band". A number of people replied to me individually but one unfortunate soul replied to all and said "Oh, pony rides - sounds like fun! Can I be the first in line? See everyone Saturday!" Needless to say I instantly remembered why she annoyed me and why I didn't want to invite her in the first place. I didn't reply to her email since I didn't think there was much point. One of my colleagues however wasn't able to resist and replied "Yes, you can be first in line. Sincerely, Pony."

The other thing I don't get about email at work are the people that use it to write personal things that quite frankly I wouldn't want to keep a record of. For example, a co-worker of mine who I will refer to as "Jane" forwarded some emails to another colleague we'll call "Sandra". The emails were related to a project the two of them were working on. However, after sending Sandra all of the related emails Jane realized that she had forwarded her one too many. After Jane realized this she quickly emailed Sandra and asked her to delete the last email she had sent her and asked her not to read it. Of course that sort of sounded like an invitation to Sandra so she immediately opened the email to find out what the fuss was about. What she found was a rather suggestive email from a male co-worker of ours named "John" . The email detailed their plans to meet up that weekend and how he doesn't know if he can wait until Saturday to see her and included some rather vivid descriptors of what he had planned for their time together. He also mentioned that he wasn't sure if he could stay long on Sunday since it was Father's Day. Oh yeah, I forgot to mention that he's married. To be fair though, he seems to have his priorities in order. What makes the story even more painful/hilarious is that as soon as Sandra read this email she forwarded it to ten or more of her nearest and dearest co-workers. So within a few hours pretty much everyone knew about this rendezvous on the weekend. To make matters worse the next day at lunch with all of the key players in attendance one of the guys who received a copy of this email begins the lunch hour conversation by asking "So anyone have any exciting plans for the weekend?"