Dear Y'all:

The group mailing address that sends email to everybody in the company is a feature that should be used sparringly. Its purpose is to allow a simple way for people like the President, CFO, and Bob to tell us when people are fired, when our W-2 forms will be ready, and when the gas leak is fixed, respectively. Occassional use by other people is okay, but only when they have an actual message imparting information that applies to the entire company. For example, it's okay when the receptionist sends out an email that the car wash guy is here. It's okay for someone to send an email when they put homemade cookies in the break room.

It is NOT okay to use this function in order to spread your lame attempts at witticisms. Your attempts at humorous and thoroughly unnecessary rejoinders to the valid mass mails that are sent out should be made using the "Reply" button as opposed to the "Reply All" button.

Look at it this way: I am far, far, far more clever than any of you (with the possible exception of Dopple-G, depending on our relative performance that day) and I do not attempt to spread tidbits of lame-osity through what is essentially spam. Do you really think that you should try this using your (comparably) inferior intellect and sense of humor?

Let us review the last chain of stupidity and I can show you which messages were applicable and proper and which made the senders look like complete imbeciles, short only the barbarian "Yeaaaaagh!" as a closer.

Good: Original email from Salesgirl asking if anybody has jumper cables. Normally I would prefer that this be done in a hunting about the office face-to-face interview fasion but in this case the persons stranded were needed for a video conference and speed was of the essence.

Good: Reply email from 1st Guy. This was an exceptionally well sent email as he sent it directly to Salesgirl, properly avoiding the mass spam button.

Bad: Reply email from 2nd Guy. This was a bad email as it was sent to everybody in the company. Everybody in the company was not interested in the fact that 2nd Guy had jumper cables. In fact only one person (Salesgirl) gave even a shred of a damn.

Bad: Reply email from 3rd Guy. This was actually worse than the email from 2nd Guy as there is no possible way that 3rd Guy could justify sending this to everybody in the company. Even if there were one or two people apart from Salesgirl who gave a shred of a damn about the jumper cable emergency we all had already been informed of the existence of the items in 2nd Guy's posession.

Bad: Reply email from 1st Gal. I have no way to explain what 1st Gal was doing here. Was she confused? Did she think that Salesgirl's intent was that the entire company take the time to independently inventory all of the jumper cables available? Is she just oh so proud of her jumper cables that she could not hold back her exultation at owning such a fine product and was forced by her inner demons to share this fact with all of us? Or is she perhaps an idiot?

Good: Email from Salesgirl notifying us that she would be using 1st Guy's cables and thanking all of us for our help. This was an especially welcome email as it stopped the continued assault of the "I've got cables too!" crowd.

Bad: Email from 3rd Guy letting us all know that if we ever need jumper cables he'd be happy to help us out. We already knew this as he had told us in his previous spammage. I guess 3rd Guy really really really wants people to use his jumper cables. 3rd Guy has issues with his Mother touching him in his naughty place.

Bad: Email from 4th Guy commenting on 3rd Guy's over-enthusiastic cable sharing. All of us who have occasion to use rational thought had already made the connection between 3rd Guy and some weird psycho-cable thing. This was simply a blatant cry for attention from 4th Guy, who was jelous because he hadn't answered Salesgirl's original email in time to let us all know that he has jumper cables too. 4th Guy did not get enough warm fuzzies as a child.

Bad: Email from Salesguy when he got back from being rescued, thanking 1st Guy for the cables and Salesgirl for rescuing him. We don't care. It's nice that you want to publicly thank them for helping you but you should have resisted the urge. Say I hold the door open for you as we come in from a smoke. Would you send an email to the entire company to thank me for doing so? No, you wouldn't. You would say "Hey, thanks Jim" and that would be the end of it. Your blatant attempt at flattery and attention gathering makes you seem childish and petty. Salesguy is a worm.

Please refrain from being a nuckfut like 2nd, 3rd and 4th Guy, 1st Gal and Salesguy. As a rule of thumb, only use that "ALL" button if you think it would be proper to go individually to each person in the company to give them the message verbally.

Email is a tool so it is only as good as its users and quite frankly y'all suck. Do better next time or there will be consequences.

With love,
Jim

cc: All