Today was an email nightmare day, thanks to other people’s laziness and/or stupidity. Yes, I said it….stupidity. I’m so aggravated at the fact that my email inbox has blown up today with emails that are neither relevant to me, nor intended for me.
It all started when someone sent an email out to a few hundred recipients. That person did not CC or more importantly, BCC (blind carbon copy) those few hundred recipients, but instead added a few hundred email address to the TO field. In this person’s email, they asked for people to respond yes or no to a certain question.
Can you guess where this is going?
Here’s where it went all kinds of wrong. My inbox started filling up with messages intended for the sender, but because the responder can’t figure out how to locate the REPLY button, they selected the REPLY ALL button (WHY OH WHY???). Now, I don’t know if they were blind or stupid (yes, I said it again), but why in the world would you send your yes or no answer to hundreds of people who could care less. Oh, and did I mention that no less than two VPs got in on this action?
However, my overflowing inbox is not just the result of careless respondents. Oh no. The blame for this whole fiasco lies squarely on the shoulders of the original sender of the rouge email (and this is not the first time this person has done this). ALL of this could have been avoided if that person had simply put those few hundred recipients emails in the BCC field. At that point, even the reckless respondents couldn’t have possibly REPLY ALL’ed.
For the love of all things holy, if YOU are sending a mass email to a large group of recipients, please do the right thing and put those addresses in the BCC field of your email program of choice. Not only will it protect the privacy of those respondents, but it also shows you respect that privacy, and their time.
Purrfectlee Imperfect 
