15 minutes of fame

“We all have our days when we’re stupid. Today, we all got ours out of the way.”

Yesterday, I found myself saying those very words to the members of the magazine team of which I’m a part. Because yesterday, we all got our 15 of fame . . . for something entirely stupid.

Most of you know that I work for a large company. A company with divisions and a lot of employees and a lot of email addresses. A few days ago, I’d gotten an email from someone I and members of my department work closely with on some products. She was asking if we had any old magazines we could send her way for a conference that’s happening this weekend. I did have old magazines, but was in the middle of something else when I got the email and didn’t respond immediately. Which meant that pretty soon, I completely forgot about it.

Until yesterday when one of my team members sent an email to what I thought was me and the woman who’d asked for the magazines. I replied all and said that I had some to send her way, too. That’s when I realized something had gone drastically wrong. Because either my team member or I had replied all to the initial message which—wait for it—was addressed to all of the departments in the publishing division of our company. And my teammate and I had just replied all to ALL of them. Then, another team member got in on the insanity and replied all saying SHE had magazines. Now all of publishing knows we have a stash of magazines.

Then, IT happened. The moment that reminds me that people are weird and somewhere someone might be watching us for some storyline to add to “The Office.” Someone in another department replied all to our messages and said this “You know you don’t have to reply all to this. We don’t all need to know that you have magazines for her.”

When that came across my email, it first made me mad, then it made me laugh. I fired off a quick email to her basically saying the whole thing was an accident/comedy of errors and I was sorry we had annoyed her. I wanted to say more, like “Why did you reply ALL with your smart alecky remark if you hate reply all?” or “Do you realize this email is rude or can at least be read as being rude?” or “Who do you think you are?” But knowing none of those responses would help the situation, I reigned my tongue in, chose to speak words “seasoned with salt,” and move on.

Eventually, I got a response from the person who sent the reply all smart remark in which she thanked me for understanding. I wanted to write back that I didn’t understand, that I thought she was being petty and rude, and had come across as a jerk, that she needed to think before she spoke and/or fired off emails, that we were making a big deal out of something that was at best mildly funny, but I held my tongue (and my typing fingers for that matter).

A little later, an email popped up our inboxes questioning the woman sending a reply all response correcting people for replying all by. . . wait for it. . . replying all. Then, reports came in from people we know in the company who told us they’d sent emails saying the person was out of line and had come across as rude. Crazyness!

As a team, we just decided to chalk it up to our day to do something stupid and move on. And pay more attention when replying all FOR THE REST OF OUR LIVES.