Compulsive CC'ers and Reply All-ers

LooseMoose

They need to stop it. Now. So for some reason, my 'boss' has just sent a mail that is a routine IT issue to the director of our Group AND managers at my place of work. Why? Why would you do that? Surely he's just going to get the mail, say 'And...like I care?' and tell you to talk to the people that can actually help. FFS.

kjdowd

Deeply irritating. More irritating, however, was the CEO of a partner company of ours who - whenever you cc'd him on something - would have a standard reply that basically read "I noticed you have cc'd me on an email. As I am fantastically busy and important I don't read cc'd emails, so if you really think you are worthy of my attention try a little harder". A real people person.

Edit - have just checked and the actual wording was "I notice you have cc'd me on an email. This will go to a separate email folder which is rarely checked. If you feel that I need to read this email please resend it to me direct". Prick.

Deadman

The only problem is when you don't CC them, they get to find out about it later and 'advise' you to "keep them in the loop". Happens to me all the time.

Chalky

Deadman;959063" said:

The only problem is when you don't CC them, they get to find out about it later and 'advise' you to "keep them in the loop". Happens to me all the time.

Spot on @Deadman. Only fuckwits who don't understand how communication works say "Don't CC or Reply All". I tell them bluntly that it is THEIR responsibility to assess the communication because the rest of us aren't telepathic about what communications they may or may not be interested in at any arbitrary point in time.

Deadman

Nailed it in one Chalky.

57Deluxe

...just as long as is not pics of his engoeged privates...

mudslide73

I get the "because you haven't sorted my problem out to my satisfaction I will cc everyone (including God) in on our comms". I never do this - just come and see me and we'll sort it out. There is no mileage in this approach - it just serves to ruin good working relationships. If I had the staff/budget/time etc. you wouldn't have to wait so long, cockwomble.

I hate the circular "can I borrow a stapler" emails having reply all's. eg. "sorry, I don't have a stapler because someone didn't return it last time", "Mary has a stapler, I think" etc. Twats.

FX_Munkee

LooseMoose said:

They need to stop it. Now. So for some reason, my 'boss' has just sent a mail that is a routine IT issue to the director of our Group AND managers at my place of work. Why? Why would you do that? Surely he's just going to get the mail, say 'And...like I care?' and tell you to talk to the people that can actually help. FFS.

I quite enjoy it when that happens. I tend to jump straight in start explaining why this and that isn't working/was a bad idea etc. Why we need more time for this and that we have no resource for that.
Basically making sure that the person right at the top of the food chain has an idea that everything is not "going perfectly" as their immediate subordinates invariably tell them.
Well obviously they wanted my input, and they wanted everyubody to hear it, that's why they sent it to everybody, Shirley?

Myranda

LooseMoose said:

They need to stop it. Now. So for some reason, my 'boss' has just sent a mail that is a routine IT issue to the director of our Group AND managers at my place of work. Why? Why would you do that? Surely he's just going to get the mail, say 'And...like I care?' and tell you to talk to the people that can actually help. FFS.

But... including the boss means that if you DON'T get it done then they can send follow up emails - great for bad IT departments.

Deadman said:

The only problem is when you don't CC them, they get to find out about it later and 'advise' you to "keep them in the loop". Happens to me all the time.

Not including people in emails can often lead to people who wanted to be informed not knowing what's going on, you then weeks later get an email scheduling an hour long meeting to update them on the progress of the issue (yes, I've worked in placed that don't think a quick phone call exists)

dern

Cc'ing everyone on everything is just a waste of everyone's time perpetuated by the needy. If you can handle it then handle it without your boss being cc'd because that's your job. If you can't handle it then ask them for help. If there's something you have handled but you think they might need to know about just in case it comes up then an email titled "FYI... issue with server that has been handled but may come up in conversation" is way more useful than getting a stream of emails titled "FW: RE: Re: Server down". As a manager you'd have to be an idiot to want to be kept up to date with everything... the point of delegating is that you don't have to be.

PolarityMan

My favourite one is the reply-to all mail list spiral. Happens at least twice a year where I work sometimes with distribution lists of 10,000+ people.

Basically where some idiot accidentally replies to all including a mail list then you get muppets replying all to the reply telling people not to reply all and then people pointing out that replying to all to tell people not to reply to all is just as bad until eventually someone discovers how to nuke the whole mailing list.

They should basically use that like a honey trap when planning redundancies, I assume it's prefectly legal because I reckon no matter how big a company you don't really need more than one village idiot.

menamestom

Best thing I ever did was set up an 'ignore' folder where everything I'm cc'd in goes into.  I don't look in there much, it's not a nice place.

Chalky

menamestom;960033" said:

Best thing I ever did was set up an 'ignore' folder where everything I'm cc'd in goes into.  I don't look in there much, it's not a nice place.

I did actually know a senior manager who for 12 months rigidly auto-filed his CC emails and refused to read emails more than 3 lines long. I say 12 months because he was sacked from his £250k job. Sacked for Gross Fuckwittery )