It’s the day before a long weekend and I expect traffic to plummet, so to send you off into the holiday with something fun, here are 10 reply-all horror stories that have been shared here over the years.
1. The burnt bagel
My first or two week at a new job, someone burned a bagel in the toaster, which resulted in the firm alarm going off. Those toasters really needed to be watched closely, because things would barely toast at all some days, and on others, it would burn (settings were not toggled different ways, it was just an old POS) so it really didn’t take a lot. Food burning in either the microwave or toaster and fire alarms going off happened at least once a month, so that in of itself was nothing special.
However, for some reason, someone got really invested in knowing who burned the bagel. They sent a company-wide email (100+ people) titled “Who burned the bagel?” and included a picture they googled of a burned bagel and a description of how badly it stunk up their space. Before long, there were dozens of responses speculating on who burned the bagel, how many times bagels had been burned, plenty of “OMG LOL” type of replies, and comments on the smell. It got so bad a manager finally replied all, “These emails are immature and need to stop. Thank you.”
2. The resignation
An employee emailed their resignation to the entire company (over 10,000 people) with a bullet point list of all the ways they hated their job, their boss, management, and the company.
It was hilarious – we received thousands of reply-all emails and servers were crashing. Upper management was sent around each floor to tell people to stop and that they would be fired for responding at this point.
A coworker kept a printed copy of that email on his wall for years.
3. The candor
My two favorite reply-all incidents happened when I worked at a large university. It used to send out all-staff update emails each evening at about 10pm. One Friday evening, one particular member of staff had clearly been drinking heavily at the point that these emails started arriving, and replied all saying, “You don’t pay me enough to give a f*ck about this.”
The other was on a global researchers mailing list where someone thought they were sending a message to a friend but accidentally included the whole list saying, “Personally, I’ve never thought much of Jane Doe.” Obviously Jane Doe was on the list, as were many of her friends and colleagues. There quickly followed a desperate follow-up email saying, “When I said I’ve never thought much of her, I mean I’ve never thought about her much because our research areas don’t coincide.” We all knew the truth though.
4. The robes
When I was a student, an email got sent out to the entire graduating year (at least 6,000 students) about the deadline to order academic robes for graduation. One student missed the deadline and replied to all 6,000 explaining that he had been busy with his job but please please could they make an exception to let him get his robes. The result was a reply-all campaign where half the student body pitched in to convince the organisers to let him get his robes. There was a hashtag and everything. In the end, he was allowed to order them and during the graduation ceremony when his name was announced he got a special cheer from all the students who recognised the name.
5. The accident
My favorite involved an embarrassing email that the sender (a woman) meant to send to just one friend, but accidentally sent to the entire listserv. She mentioned in the email that she needed to get “a bit of ass” that weekend.
Hilariously, in addition to all the “remove me from this list” and “stop replying all” comments, there were also many replies from people who were offended by the raunchiness of the email and demanded to unsubscribe … as if this poor woman had sent it on purpose!! lol
6. The latecomer
This happened at my workplace about a year ago! I would wager that around 2,000 people were involved with this reply-all and it went through the usual 3-4 days of “This isn’t for me,” then “Stop replying all,” then “Stop replying to tell people to stop replying all,” and then finally died down.
Cue two weeks later, some guy known to be kind of a self-important douche replies all saying he just returned from vacation and noticed this in his inbox and that while the matter was almost certainly resolved by now, the person who sent it should feel consolation that we’ve all made this mistake before (as an aside, no … we haven’t) and he’s sure their reputation will heal in time. Immediately, a partner replies back “DO NOT REPLY TO THIS.”
7. The oil painting
We had a rash of these events, several in the course of a few weeks; some sensors covering medicine storage areas were being updated one by one, and occasionally an “incorrect data” notification went out to the thousands of people in the temp-monitoring group. The third time this happened, a doctor of rheumatology in the group immediately responded with a beautiful, AI-rendered, oil-paint-style image of an office flooded by emails.
Water was pouring into an office area, but that water was carrying a tide of little white “new email” envelope icons. Haggard-looking office workers try to bail out their cubicles, tossing buckets of envelopes back into the sea whilst their monitors all mock them by displaying that same icon, blown up to fit each screen. One employee hunches over in a rowboat, attempting to stay afloat atop the unstable surface. Rather ominously, some kind of rudimentary face, with red, glowing eyes and mouth, watches in apparent satisfaction from the stormy clouds above.
It’s now my desktop background. His email didn’t stop the flood, but by George, it was a good effort.
8. The legal threat
The best I encountered recently was on a mailing list for a volunteer group. Tons of people replying all imploring others not to reply all; a couple brave souls pointing out that this was a mailing list and there was no reply all option, so the only way to kill the thread was for people to just stop replying; and one person threatening legal action (!!) if people didn’t stop emailing her.
9. The karma
When we got a mass email once, I sent a response to my work-friend: “Oh great, a mass email. Now all our inboxes are going to get inundated with reply-all’s. Just you wait.”
The kicker: I’d accidentally hit “reply-all.”
*hangs head in shame*
10. The hero
I once intentionally created a reply-all nightmare because, sometimes, you just gotta do what you gotta do. I work in a field which is overwhelmingly lead by white men, even though the majority of college graduates are women. Women don’t make it to the top. The firm sent out a “culture survey” to the only predominately female department, seeking input on ways to improve the department culture, with suggestions like (I. Kid. You. Not.) book clubs, knitting clubs, cooking clubs … all after hours, unpaid labor in order to “improve culture.”
My reply-all: “We are professionals, and therefore improving culture should be through professional channels such as: appropriate (i.e. equal) pay, benefits, professional development opportunities, supportive management, interesting work assignments, etc. If the culture of the department needs improvement, asking us to put in more unpaid time to read books and watch movies together will not fix it.”
The replies went on for about an hour and a half and I regret nothing.
11. The pot pie (a late-breaking addition!)
In the early days of email, my roommate worked at a global company–thousands of employees with offices all over the world. Someone’s pot pie was stolen from the freezer in the DC office and naturally, he was furious about it. So he sent an all-company rant demanding to be reimbursed. To every office around the world. The reply-alls flooded in.
Some people had never heard of a pot pie; luckily folks stepped in, eager to explain the magic of the pot pie and share recipes. Some missed the pot pies of their youth and wondered if anyone knew where to find them in their region. Some thought the dollar amount requested was outrageous for a pot pie. Some couldn’t believe he would eat a frozen pot pie instead of making one from scratch. And why on earth did he get turkey instead of chicken?!
Entire conversations grew from this pot pie. Friendships and alliances were formed, enemies were made. My roommate would forward updates throughout the day and we would spend the evening rehashing the top pot pie stories. This was at least 20 years ago and we still laugh about it.
Best part? Weeks after the flurry had died down and the pot pie had been forgotten, someone came back from vacation and replied-all to let everyone know how unhealthy pot pies are. Which reminded the victim that he had still not been reimbursed. And so it began again.
