Reply to All

When I got home from work today, the first thing I did was to log back onto the internet. (It's quite the drug. This is why I don't want a Blackberry. I'd be very susceptible to the addiction.) When I logged onto my work email, there were 70 emails. My first thought, sadly, was "Oh my gosh. What have I done?" (I have a perpetually guilty conscience.) (I have issues.)

I had read an email earlier in the day and should have seen it coming. Some poor principal or administrator in the system sent an email to the entire school system, so far as I could tell. He immediately sent another message saying, "Oops. Sorry." If you have been online for any amount of time, you have experienced the avalanche of emails that follow. "Take me off the list." "Take me off the list too." "You're not on a list. Don't hit 'reply to all." "Stop hitting 'reply to all." "Take me off the list too." Lord have mercy.

In the process of the mass deletion I'd pause occasionally to read one....just in case. Inevitably it would be yet another person sending a "Reply to all" saying "STOP REPLYING TO ALL." I know this situation gets many people irate, probably especially the poor IT folks. Unfortunately, I find it rather comical. I have to force myself not to reply to all and say, "The last one to hit 'reply to all' is a rotten egg!"