Shenanigans!: Mitt Romneys Tax Return: SineSwiper: Office Rule #4:

Do not send the email if you're not comfortable with it being sent to everybody in the company! This isn't just about Reply to All, but message threads that end up being forwarded, or add-ons to message threads, etc. Also, quit using email like a chat protocol. IM is there for a reason. (And that also means you don't start using the corporate IM for vulgar comments, either.)

Absolutely this. Do not use company email for private communications. Even if you don't screw up and send it to the wrong people, another person in the chain could. Also, company email accounts have no legal privacy rights (and your company can archive them forever).

Absolutely. I knew of a coworker at my company who was fired several years ago for exchanging porn via company email with a friend of hers outside the company. She was caught when IT happened to read her emails.

I don't use company email for any personal correspondence whatsoever - you never know who could be looking, and you have no reason to expect your company emails are private.

Speaking of personal correspondence I would be interested to know how much BS gets pushed through our servers. People have their facebook setup to send info to work, bank and credit card statements, pretty much anything important gets sent to their work email.

Lsherm: WayToBlue: ZAZ: Also, company email accounts have no legal privacy rights (and your company can archive them forever).

A large corporate employer had a policy of wiping email off the Exchange server after a short period. The purpose was to keep enemy lawyers away. The email you copied to your personal mail folder on your company computer was still backed up. Company lawyers felt comfortable not searching your personal mail folder in response to discovery demands for all email.

I'm curious, when was this? AFAIK it has been standard practice to include end point mail storage for discovery requests for a while now.

Since my division has to deal with legal requests all the time, and the last one included decrypting a 10 year-old Groupwise archive stored on an employee's computer, I don't think that strategy works any more.

Hah, we deal with mails going back to the 80s. And the rules of ediscovery are only getting more inclusive, not less.

How about instead of the nuclear option, we create a better UI for Reply All that gently reminds you who is going to see your message before you hit send?

MrEricSir: How about instead of the nuclear option, we create a better UI for Reply All that gently reminds you who is going to see your message before you hit send?

Because ALL simply doesn't imply everyone, we should make a popup "are you sure you want to reply to all", that everyone will ignore.

Because everyone will ignore the popup, we can make another popup that pops up when you click "I am sure" that says "are you sure you're sure?"

fluffy2097: MrEricSir: How about instead of the nuclear option, we create a better UI for Reply All that gently reminds you who is going to see your message before you hit send?

Because ALL simply doesn't imply everyone, we should make a popup "are you sure you want to reply to all", that everyone will ignore.

Because everyone will ignore the popup, we can make another popup that pops up when you click "I am sure" that says "are you sure you're sure?"

There's more subtle UI tricks than what Microsoft was doing 20 years ago.

If you're stupid enough to send an e-mail that can get you fired over the company e-mail system in the first place, you deserve to be fired whether you accidentally click reply-all or not. Accidentally hitting Reply All isn't one strike against you in the "fire him" category, it's two.

Meaning that if you're the kind of employee that's bad enough to send such an e-mail, you've probably screwed up in the past enough that it's completely legitimate that this should send you over the edge and lose you your job.

downstairs: Maybe your client is different, but I use Outlook 2003 and "reply" and "reply all" does not include the attachment.  Only forwarding it does.

I concur; my example was trying to illustrate why that's the way it works. If replies contained attachments, it could generate a punishing burden on your email system.

Smackledorfer: Reply all is useful.
I've never accidentally hit it, but can see how it is easy to do. I view this as an ergonomics issue.

And to all the haters here saying people deserve to be fired for what amounts to a tiny mistake: you are assholes. The only difference between you and any of the people who have hit reply all is that you have yet to make the mistake, or your errors have luckily occurred in ways that didn't create a problem.

mistakes: everybody makes them. EVERYBODY.

It's already been mentioned but it's worth repeating: if you write an email that would get you fired if your management saw it - you've already failed.

Wingchild: I concur; my example was trying to illustrate why that's the way it works. If replies contained attachments, it could generate a punishing burden on your email system.


Plus, everyone you could Reply or Reply All to already has the attachment.

dywed88: Plus, everyone you could Reply or Reply All to already has the attachment.

Yes. Honestly the compounding size effect is already bad enough with inline images (which aren't stripped under most conditions). You can watch the individual message size in a thread go up and up as people include their favorite pictures of ... whatever. It reminds me of a Fark thread in a way. At least Drew's people had the good sense to not try and host all the image content people add!

Kid Mojo: Just get rid of BCC and we'll all be happy.

I object. BCC is a superb tool for destroying the careers of incompetent and bigoted management when HR is included on just the right evidence.

Hawnkee: Kid Mojo: Just get rid of BCC and we'll all be happy.

I object. BCC is a superb tool for destroying the careers of incompetent and bigoted management when HR is included on just the right evidence.

BCC is something not necessary within normal business usage.

However, for the right purposes it is invaluable. Mailing Lists for customers, especially for things like renters under management companies... require BCC. I should never see one, let alone hundreds of other peoples' e-mail addresses, nor should they see mine. It isn't like I don't need or want the info being send, but the e-mail addresses of all the other customers are not part of the info I should be getting.

Wingchild: In E2k10 single instance storage no longer exists; everybody on a database receiving that email gets a unique copy of the attachment.

Now I quite like Exchange, it is one of if not the best corporate E-mail systems around (Domino/Notes is a better groupware system but for e-mail sucks the sweat from a dead mans balls). However, I offer THIS single missing feature as proof that the Exchange team at MSFT is now, irrevocably, full of DERP.

As you say, it's all fun and games until some jackass (usually in marketing) tries to ram a DVD/BluRay ISO through the system to 50 farking people.

/And opens a ticket that it's either a) telling him to fark off or b) taking forever to send.

Anastacya: Uh, how about not composing an email that has the potential of getting you into trouble in the first place? Politics in an office exist

"We didn't start the fire, we just brought the marshmallows" - Reprimand, offensive to people who've been in a fire.

"It's a auto-tape loaded not R2D2, it can't 'escape' it's just out of alignment and beating tapes against the door, we just need to call the support company and they can insert an engineer to correct it's behaviour... probably with a hammer." - Reprimand, offensive to 'people of short stature' and sufferers of domestic abuse.

Getting in trouble for sending an e-mail does not require you to actually use any vulgar words, slang, misquote or indeed do anything beyond clicking send. I've seen reprimands handed out before now for quoting Ghandi's "First they laugh at you..." line as it might cause offence to someone of a different religion.

But in all three of those instances; nothing actually offensive was ever said.

Vaneshi: Getting in trouble for sending an e-mail does not require you to actually use any vulgar words, slang, misquote or indeed do anything beyond clicking send. I've seen reprimands handed out before now for quoting Ghandi's "First they laugh at you..." line as it might cause offence to someone of a different religion.

Work is not the time for flowery prose dude. I know you have an English degree and desperately want to prove it wasn't a degree in underwater basket weaving, but work e-mail is not the place to do it.

"We didn't cause this problem, we are just profiting from it."

"The tape autoloader is out of alignment and we need to have a tech sent out."

"We will win this contract in the long run."

/Is this hard? really?

fluffy2097: Vaneshi: Getting in trouble for sending an e-mail does not require you to actually use any vulgar words, slang, misquote or indeed do anything beyond clicking send. I've seen reprimands handed out before now for quoting Ghandi's "First they laugh at you..." line as it might cause offence to someone of a different religion.

Work is not the time for flowery prose dude. I know you have an English degree and desperately want to prove it wasn't a degree in underwater basket weaving, but work e-mail is not the place to do it.

"We didn't cause this problem, we are just profiting from it."

"The tape autoloader is out of alignment and we need to have a tech sent out."

"We will win this contract in the long run."

/Is this hard? really?

Some people have the impulse to appear to be something other than an automaton. In this sort of situation, they frequently engage in a form of dialogue known as banter in an effort to convince themselves that their jobs are not bleak days of mindless drudgery and their e-mail messages composed entirely of fill-in-the-blanks pablum.

Your profile says you're in Massachusetts, which means it's unlikely that I work for you. For this I am very thankful. My cow-orkers and superiors are pretty good about allowing people space to banter.

There are plenty of times and ways to show you are a special flower.

Discussing serious corporate matters is not the time or place. Business communication needs to be clear and unambiguous. It's not even about potentially offending someone. Your colorful turn of phrase could be completely lost to someone in a different part of the world or who has a different cultural background, and then you're just wasting time as they need to ask for clarification on "why having sex with a chicken is relevant to a vendors continuous failure to deliver on promises"

If you want to use colorful euphemisms and flowery prose, do it on your coffee break or when talking in person with someone who you know will understand and appreciate it. My coworkers and I bantered all the time in the shop and on breaks. Never in company e-mail.

/Why is it so hard for people to act professional in the office in a situation where they know everything they say is being logged?