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Allegedly I work in one of the "smarter" places around - Los Alamos National Laboratory.

My mailbox is, at this moment, blowing up with "smart" people "replying-all" to a probably 12,000-wide broadcast message complaining that everyone else is "replying-all".

It's like that cartoon panel of the kid pushing on the School for the Gifted door that says "Pull".

Lordy...

LOL!

It's funny because I've seen it over and over again.

I used to see folks at Cisco which is a tech company click on emails with attachments like the old Anna Kournikova virus.

I remember seeing a job req come out to everyone in our company in the city. Some guy "reply all" and included his resume and wanted to apply. Most of us groaned when we saw it. One of our colleagues reply alled to the guy with something like "your resume looks great. I'd hire you. Good luck." We all groaned at him.

What you described was my other favorite (thankfully, haven't seen it in a while). Email comes out to HUGE distribution list of mostly folks that don't know or don't care and should never have been copied. The few folks that do care start emailing back and forth, but are still copying the other folks. So everyone else starts "reply all" to the thread "please remove me from this email thread." Then some other genius starts reply alling to those folks to tell them to not SPAM the whole group with their replies. I've seen an inbox fill with several hundred emails in the course of an hour from one email thread.

Delete All...or Ignore All?

Think of the lost productivity when someone Reply-All's to 12K employees.

This is why you have moderation for group lists.

No one has permission to send to a group, all emails need approval.

The other way to do it if you are adding individuals manually, add them to BCC.

BCC's get ignored in reply all.

Yah, it was just an announcement for some technical symposium or something. Blah blah "Lanthanide-related underwear nabbers" or something. Not even really critical for the 11,950 of us without lanthanide-laced underwear.

(just kidding, but smart people can be pretty dumb...)

Just because they have a phd doesn't mean they're smart.

Haha, I worked at a place with about 250 phd's. Some were so dumb they could barely order lunch.

I remember one guy particularly. He was almost screaming and crying because his computer wouldn't go and he was close to missing a deadline. As a computer tech I went around and switched it on at the wall for him LOL

Yeah i work with a lot of post docs. Some good ones. Some have to be coddled. Kinda funny. Pass a few accumulative exams, spend 5 years as some researcher's *****, publish and there you go. Mind you that you're funded and paid a salary for the research.

Well some of our ones were pretty dumb. A company would fund them. Pay a LOT of money for certain research. Then the half wits would go and publish a paper on their findings. The company's competitors would be absolutely delighted to get the research done for free LOL

You need to give these gifted people a break.

My son is on the spectrum and stupid scary smart but needs 10 minutes to put on socks.

Go out to dinner with him and it's difficult for him to order a drink but he's smarter than everyone in the room combined.

The real kicker is, they are generally fully aware of their challenges in navigating day to day life.

They know they are not "the norm" and they have feelings just like us.

Many of them would trade their gift to be "normal" but there is literally nothing most of them can do about how they are wired.

Unless you are absolutely perfect in everything you do in life then shut up and have some ****ing compassion.

Yeah they're not doing it right.... lol

Calm down this is an argument of academia and knuckle draggers it associates with. No one makes fun of the spectrum kids. That's just cruel.

A disproportionate amount of those academics are on the spectrum so yeah, while you may think that’s not what you are doing, that’s what you are doing.

And don’t ever tell me to calm down.

You have no place to tell me ****.

Sorry, I'll STFU

I was really thinking of these guys at the previous job. They all seemed to have grey beards, wear sandals, and when asking for lunch they kind of nodded at what they wanted and did a snort or grunt for emphasis.

Angry you are..


Suggest taking deep breath.

"Gifted" is a minority. Most are hardworking people that find a niche that they enjoy and run with it. That said just because one is book smart doesn't mean they are street smart. Ie you can know everything about an ICE, but not know how to fix one. Or it's like asking a computional chemist to complete complicated redox reactions in a lab. Different stroke for different folk.

You have no place telling people to shut up and have f’ing compassion.


Your social skills need work. Are you by any chance on the spectrum too?
If you want to make a point or get something done, try not to be a grade A dik about it.
I’d tell you to chill, but something tells me that will backfire.

Years ago a junior manager hit "reply to all" accidentally and in that email he wrote about a difficult client.
The difficult client hit "reply to all" on purpose with his detailed response. :D

I've always been amazed at what people will write in an Email. If you need to vent why not pick up the phone and call someone?

Happens here, too (Oak Ridge National Lab). It is even worse when people hit "reply all" to tell everyone to stop hitting "reply all"...

And, we should start a thread just to post the titles of seminars and symposiums.