Why "Reply All" is The Most Dangerous Button

When I first entered the business world, as opposed to when I was a teacher in the late 80s and no one had computers, I learned that there was a very dangerous setting in the email system.  It's "reply all".

This particular setting can be dangerous for many reasons, but the two most important ones, in my opinion, are:

- saying the wrong words to the wrong person

- saying the wrong words to someone who doesn't care one iota what you're saying, yet has to wade through your responses

Some people have their DEFAULT email settings on "reply all".  I do not understand this.  It is much more likely that what you need to say to respond to an email applies to one or maybe two people, than to the entire group the email was sent to.  It's much better to have it set to just reply to the person, THEN you can deliberately add others that you've specifically chosen to also hear what you have to say.

Using this pre-caution can save you a lot of embarrassment, and potential for putting your foot so far into your mouth that there is no extracting it.  I can think of many instances of corporate communication when the conversation veered off into complaining about a certain employees lazy habits, and yet there she was, still in the email chain, probably feeling each stab of the knife in her back as the emails rolled in, her name not taken off.

I'm not saying that those words didn't need to be said. Perhaps some disciplinary action was in order, but that should have been discussed through other channels of HR, and not in gossipy email between co-workers.

The other instance of mis-use of the reply-all button has to do with personal correspondence.  I've been the on the receiving end of too many of the following type incident.

Let's say someone is having a baby, and a list has been provided to a friend to "alert everyone" once the blessed event has happened.  Great!  Glad to be informed.  Happy for the new parents.  What I don't need though is my phone beeping for the next three hours when everyone on that distribution list chimes in with their congratulations!  

Random numbers that aren't part of my contacts keep popping up with, "That's awesome!  I bet he looks just like his dad!  Tell them all...."  For hours.  It's wonderful that you want to congratulate and communicate.  Just would you please do it with just the person who sent you the text or email or whatever form of communication it was?  I have no idea who you are.  I don't really need 27 of basically the same thing over and over again.

I know they mean well.  I know it's hard to teach some people to just hit "reply", or to start a new text to just the one person.  I'd appreciate it though, and I know others would, too.  We've discussed it.  At length.

Besides, wouldn't you rather be safe than sorry? Wouldn't you be mortified if you said the wrong this to the wrong person?  Wouldn't you prefer not to wake someone up all night long with congratulations texts?  I think you would.

So confession time.  How many of you have been burned by hearing the wrong thing about yourself, or saying the wrong thing to the wrong person? How many extraneous group reply texts have you gotten? 

Or should this have gone on Wednesdays rant about the little things that bother depressed people when they can't face the real world?

~Tina, inquiring minds want to know

©2014 All Rights Reserved 

Slice and Dice

Embarrassing story time again. These come around when I'm sitting staring at my computer and it's way past noon and I've got nothing posted. I have plenty of embarrassing stories to choose from for my writer's block days. We all have our go-to thing...

Warning: Not for the squeamish. Contains blood and guts and cringing.

I worked at Wendy's the summer after I student taught. (There are other Wendy's stories in my archives if you feel like searching...yes, also of the embarrassing category.) I started as “back-room closer” which meant I came in after the dinner rush and started doing dishes. After we closed, I was the lucky girl to empty and clean the frosty machine, the deep fat fryer, the giant vat we made the chili in, and the french fry fryers, the grills, and let's not forget all those individual tubs from the salad bar, which was all the rage in, yes I'll say it, 1987. It was mindless, gross, boring work, but the people were fun and we joked around a lot and tried to make the best of it.

After about a month, they started to let me run the registers and make burgers, fill orders and do less menial stuff. They hired a new back-room closer whom I got to train. One of the tasks I failed to mention was the cutting and chopping and prepping of the burger toppings should they run low at the end of the day. Onions and tomatoes, mostly. We had neat gadgets for this. Sharp gadgets. Dangerous in the wrong hands gadgets.

I was showing the new girl how to slice tomatoes with the mandolin.

(google free images, this one is basic, ours was bigger and fancier and had more blades)

She was doing OK, but at one point asked for help. I started to push down on the tomato, but it was a bit stuck, so I pushed harder. I should not have.

Her fingers were in the way. Then only her partial fingers were in the way. I'd sliced a few pieces off of them, just like a tomato. There was a lot of blood. We picked up the pieces, sorry about that pun but I just couldn't resist, put them in a baggie, and I got to drive her to the hospital. She was a bit green, I was quite freaked out, and I will admit it took me a while to find the correct entrance, even though I'd been there plenty of times before. (Most of my embarrassing stories do involve some sort of injury, but usually of myself. I don't make it a habit to slice and dice others.)

She was going to be just fine. The pieces were so small they weren't worth stitching back on, her fingers would just grow back. I drove her and her quite impressive bandage home, and returned to the scene of the crime. After all, they were now down one closer, and I had experience. Just enough to be dangerous.

***

Have you ever accidentally injured someone else? Yourself? Wanna share something embarrassing? It would make me feel less stupid...

~Tina

Interviewed! and a Bonus! Embarrassing Story du Jour

Good morning! I'm a being interviewed today at Curiosity Quills with Nicole of The Madlab Post!  I'm very excited to be asked, and especially with Nicole.  You remember her from the Monday Movie Meme I used to do, you know, on Mondays.

Before you head over there though, which I would so much appreciate, here's another one of my embarrassing/funny/Tina-is-such-a-klutz story to entertain you before you go...

I have to get a tetanus shot today because The Transporter cleaned his room, which of course I'm not against. AT ALL. ((The cleaning, not the tetanus, in case you were wondering.)  I might have mentioned that for a while (like four years...) he's been doing the typical teenage boy thing where all the clothes are on the floor and only he knows which are clean and which are dirty...so we finally got him dressers he likes. He worked all day and his room is now neat. However, he was tired while doing the dishes, and broke a wine glass into smithereens. Best break ever. I usually break them into maybe three pieces, but we're talking big strapping teen boy who looks like a man and has man hands and that thing was SHATTERED.

“Mom, will you get me a dustpan?”

Of course. He's been sweeping and dusting and wiping and cleaning and organizing AND put the broom and dust pan back. Here's where the klutzy part comes, but you know how I like a good build-up...

In the garage, all our gardening tools have holes drilled into the top of the handle and hang on hooks. The dustpan is supposed to be clipped to the broom. It is not. I start looking around on the floor for it, but some of these tools hang very close to the ground. Like the pitch fork for example. Can you see it coming? Pitch fork comes off wall, lands on my forearm, producing a stab wound that The Engineer has to bring a ROLL of paper towels to get me to a sink. It bleeds a long time. I never, ever do medical stuff in an off-hand sissy way. When I hurt myself, I do it RIGHT. Like OYT (Our Youngest Teen) says, I'm a medical apocalypse. Pretty good quote.

So here I am today with neosporin, a huge 2x4 band-aid, a very, very sore arm where the offending instrument of torture bruised my bone, facing a tetanus shot.

I was hoping to NOT have to get one. Kindly asked lovely office manager, with whom I've become good friends with my twice a week since August visits ;-) when my last one was. “We don't have any on record for you.” Yikes. I've been with the same practice 21 years...

Feel free to laugh. If you'd like more embarrassing stories, I have a search box, and there are lots of them. Start with the word "embarrassing" or "doctor" or some such appropriate word...

Have you ever hurt yourself in such a stupid way? Do you have a pitchfork? Have you ever wanted to use said pitchfork for a purpose it was not intended, say to threaten a child? Strike that. I'd never do such a thing...after all, he did clean his room.

~Tina

Embarrassing Story du Jour: Ice Cliff of Insanity

I think it's embarrassing story time. I'm kinda in a rut and haven't written anything that wasn't for a blog fest/hop for a while. In my “about me” section, (see tab above) I alluded to a stupid, ACCIDENTAL stunt, and now I'll come clean. I almost died peeing.

One of the most treacherous and frightening mountain passes in Colorado is called Berthoud Pass and connects I-70 (the main thoroughfare through the mountains, east to west) with the towns of Winter Park, Frasier, and on down the road on Colorado 40. It's a desolate place. There's one tiny town between I-70 and Winter Park, and it rolls up its sidewalks around 4:30 pm or so. So if you need to use the restroom, do it in Idaho Springs, and then consume nothing for the next two hours. This I've learned the hard way.

We are on one of our wonderful snowboarding trips with my Awesome Aunt Risky who has rented us a condo in Winter Park. Of course we have a late start on the trip up because the kids have to get off school and my Swissie has to finish work, so it's late and dark as we're making our way over the icy, snowy, did I mention DARK pass. I have to pee. I also know I have to hold it. But man, I've got to pee.

Finally, I ask my sister to pull into one of the slow traffic pull-offs. I know they have one foot stone walls to climb over, and then some semblance of privacy. After all, I have driven this road in daylight. Daylight is highly recommended. She pulls over. I climb over one foot wall. What I think is one foot wall. There's snow everywhere and the pull-off hasn't been plowed.  It's rather hard to see...

I soon discover that while I have indeed climbed over a one foot wall, it's on to a tall cliff, an ice cliff, long way down, boulders, creek, and ice at the bottom. I'm sliding. I manage to dig my fists into the wall (once you crack through the inch or so of really crusty snow, you can get a hand hold. And foot holds.) I figure if I'm going to slip and fall down the cliff and die in the creek, I don't want to do it after peeing my pants, so I manage to get my pants down (I think you can imagine how hard this is while hanging on for dear life, but bodily functions sometimes take precedence). I gratefully finish my business.

How to get back up though? Remembering the rock climbing lessons I've watched Aunt Risky teach the boys, I know you only let go of one hold at a time. So slowly, punching my bare hands into that frozen cliff, I slowly make my way up. But there's a lot of sliding down, too, and I'm terrified, pants still not quite on, and really starting to freak out.

God is on my side though, and crying and gasping for air (we're at 12,000 feet or so here) I manage to throw myself over the wall and into the pull-off. I'm soaked (in SNOW!)  having a good ole freakout fit of crying and screaming and trying to tell the story as I climb into the truck and she pulls away. At first she's laughing her ASS off, as you probably are too, but finally she realizes that I really was in danger, and gets eerily quiet. “Let's not tell the kids this one.” Fine by me...so I'd appreciate it if you didn't either    ;-)