When an accounting firm hires someone new, there are assumptions that they make about that new person. Things like, the new employee knows their own name and date of birth. Typical personal hygiene habits are something else that is simply taken for granted. In this information and digital age, another assumption most accounting firms make is that you are familiar with the communicative miracle that is email. Email has been around for awhile now and even the elderly and several species of pig can operate a typical Gmail account without too much trouble. Further, most humans have evolved to avoid many of the standard email snafus (e.g. attachment missing) that befall the common user (and thank goodness Google solved this problem with an attachment warning for everyone else). Today however, we have discovered that the most god-awful annoying of email mistakes — the chronic unnecessary use of the ‘Reply All’ button — has rocked PwC to the core.
We received an email informing us that several employees received the following email:
Please be aware that your vacation balance is approaching or has already reached the maximum allowable accrued vacation balance of 176 hours (22 days). Once your vacation balance reaches 176 hours, you stop accruing vacation.
According to our tipster, the “Reply-All” outbreak started after that, “I’ve gotten over 70 this morning, the majority of which read, “PLEASE REMOVE ME FROM THIS DISTRIBUTION LIST!!!!” This is true. We’ve seen several of the emails and they mostly consist of the following:
PLEASE REMOVE ME FROM THE DISTRIBUTION LIST. WHY AM I RECEIVING ALL THESE NOTIFICATIONS.? [sic and uh, why the shouting?]
And:
Remove me too Please [sic]!
And:
Please remover [sic] me, as well.
And:
Please remove me immediately [sic] this [sic] is really ridiculous.
All this Reply-Alling eventually pushed one Washington, DC employee to brink and he…replied all to make the following statement:
We’re suppose [sic] to be a SMART company with SMART people, but this continual emailing shows that we’re just a bunch of idiots.  Want to know how to stop this STUPID email chain – STOP HITTING THE REPLY ALL BUTTON!!!!!!!!!!  It’s not Rocket Science
Apparently this is still ongoing but if the madness doesn’t stop any time soon, please get in touch to let us know that everyone is okay. Jud[g]ing by the number of exclamation points, someone may soon get hurt. One must be careful when provoking people perpetually just one email away from a nervous breakdown after all.
