Reply all
 

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.

PHD in my line of work:

Professional
Hose
Dragger

"I'm not smart.....but I know what love is."

One of the greatest lines in history.......

It's not my gig, so I didn't look closely yesterday, but apparently the thread was started by a manager and the topic was one of our periodic Weapons Working Group meetings "Results from Recent Focused Plutonium Experiments".

(engaging lecture mode to provide background) Like most heavy elements Pu is strange - its closest-packed crystal structure is its least dense phase, some phases have a negative coefficient of thermal expansion, its solid floats on its liquid (like water/ice) and many other solid phases have crystal structures more familiar to geologists than metallurgists. We're still torturing it with various fancy machines to understand how the stuff works.

While the WWG is a cool tradition of openness and collaboration dating back to Oppenheimer, Fermi and Feynman in the Manhattan Project, it seems like replying-all might be our new tradition. 82 emails in under 20 mins until somebody stopped the flood.

Sage advice for everyone everywhere in this day and age.


I've been a long-time lurker and occasional poster, which affords one the chance to "know" people based on their 10+ years of postings.
What caught my attention in this thread and the watch gift thread was the out of character posts from the couple individuals whose recent tone belies the disposition of their posts from the past 10 years. It's unfortunate that post-2020 (or even post-2016) has taken a toll on certain folks here and in the real world. I hope for their sake that this edginess is limited through their connections on internet and they don't conduct themselves this way in real life. I wish them well and hope they find less stress in their life.


As for reply-all: In my experience (as someone who works with gen-zers/millennials/boomers- some uber intelligent/some not so much/some on the spectrum), I find it an issue that afflicts every demographic.

82 emails. Hilarious. Pu is very interesting. I've read up on the fires/etc. at Rocky Flats and gained some insight into its weird behavior.

Astute observation.

Stomachmonkey, my reaction to your post was out of character and most of all out of line.
I am sorry.

I think it was Vash who made the remark in another thread "It's official. You guys could argue about anything!".

It seems to be true. People are just on edge about everything. How many times in the past have you seen so many brawls in the stands at football games, basketball games, or someone getting slapped at a "black tie affair"?

I think we all just need to proofread and re read our comments, take a deep breath, then count to ten before hitting "Post Reply".

My initial reaction could have been better as well.

At another time I may have poked fun at some of those odd ducks as well.

Raising one of those odd ducks has been an eye opening experience.

The big revelation for me came 5 years ago.

When my son was elementary school age he was just a goofy kid. Middle school is when it started becoming apparent that there was something else going on. He was not maturing out of some of his behavior like his peers.

Once he was finally diagnosed Sophomore year his mother and I decided that well, its who he is and we can work with it. We'd never discussed his diagnosis with him.

He was never an unhappy kid but for thee prior few years certainly not happy. Didn't really care about his appearance. Only wore sweat pants and hoodies. Didn't make any attempts to socialize or interact with people.

I pick him up from school one day and he's in an obvious funk. Asked what was bothering him. He said "why didn't you tell me?"

Huh, tell you what?

My counselor showed me my file today.

I knew what that meant.

It'd be great if kids came with an instruction manual because it turned out our decision to not let it define him was the complete wrong thing to do.

Couple of weeks after that it was Thanksgiving and we had a house full. He was over animated, out going, seeking attention and was having fun. My wife started to get a bit irritated and I pulled her aside. Said let him go, he's doing it because he's comfortable in his own skin for possibly the first time in his life, he's not afraid to show us who he is anymore.

He always knew he was different, he just didn't know why. He thought it was just him being the weird kid that no one wanted to be seen with and no matter what or how hard he tried to fit in he couldn't. But now he knew, turns out defining him actually allowed him to accept and embrace who he is.

He was no longer abnormal, just a different normal and that was OK.

He started caring about his appearance and grooming, asking to be taken shopping and picking out bright colored shirts and proper jeans / slacks.

He stopped hiding in plain sight.

He still has a ton of social interaction issues that will likely never change but he is able to deal with them better than ever.

He's a funny, bright, caring, loving person, and can also be annoying to be around sometimes, but he is really an example being a better person than virtually all of us "normal" folk are.

I love that kid to death. He makes me smile every day.

He makes me a better person.

And yes, i get triggered easily when it comes to special needs persons.

Sorry, not sorry.

His mother and I wont be around forever and I lose sleep at night worrying about when we are no longer here.

He can live on his own but certain life skills he will almost certainly not be able to master.

Hopefully he meets a partner who "gets him" and loves him and will be there when we no longer are.

So end of day, these quirky people we run into at work and other places. They know they are not like the rest of us. But they do desperately want to be a part of the rest of us but some really honestly just can't and no amount of therapy or drugs is ever going to change it.

My suggestion, get to know them, include them, put up with their quirks and you may just find you've met one of most awesome people you'll be blessed to know.

Peace

I've always maintained that there should be a confirmation button on REPLY-ALL

Email contains more than 5 recipients. Confirm you really need REPLY-ALL
If it contains more than 20 - "Are you really sure you want to REPLY-ALL
More than 100 "This email is going to 1500 people. Is that really needed?"

I've been watching "Silicone Valley" by Mike Judge. Yeah that Bevis and Butthead guy.

He was a full on software engineer before.
Like Bruce Dickinson army mechanic and jumbo jet pilot, or Dexter Holland PhD in molecular biology.

The show is full of that carp.
Most of it is very subtle. Watching at the zoo.

I get a message when i forget to attach files and click send. "Did you forget an attachment" or something like that pops up.

Reply all is just fun. I like when you get a bcc on a send all email that still has the original chain of yahoos gossiping about other people. Phd's are fun individuals to work with.

Yes. When there's a lot of uncertainty and the general state of society right now. It's a powder keg of emotion ready for someone to just happen to be smoking close enough.

Don't look up on Netflix is a comical example. "Don't you know all you people are gonna die?!!!!" Nahhhhh

My father, RIP, had a master's in engineering and worked at DOE in Oak Ridge. One time he came to visit us in Germany after he retired. We asked If he would like to check his personal email. He couldn't understand how he could check his email on our computer.

Not to worry, he only dealt with nuclear stuff before that...

This week I emailed another attorney about a mutual client. I was on Outlook and found an old email from her, selected send mail.

Little did I realize that the address I had chosen was from our criminal defense organization. So my email went to her, AND THE REST OF THE GROUP. Just a few hundred folks.

I wanted to crawl under the table when I realized and a few folks replied pointing out the error. Tomorrow is Friday and I survived.

We have that at work. If you reply or even just send an email to a distribution list, you'll get something like "an email address that you are sending to has more than 32 individuals in the group. Are you sure?"

Happens at least once a quarter here...some people are actually starting to get smart and putting the distro list in the BCC to avoid the reply all stupidity, but every time it happens, I lose faith in humanity. (I work in a tech heavy portion of the DoD).