Secondhand Sunday

Sundays are my Secondhand day. I'm basically too lazy to think of anything new to say so I re-post a "vintage" entry.

If you aren't in the mood for repeats, please feel free to change the channel.


"STUPID PEOPLE SUCK"

Original Post Date, February 12, 2009


I certainly don't profess to be the brightest bulb in the bunch but I really have no patience for outright stupidity. They say ignorance is bliss but it's only bliss for the ignoramus, not for those of us around them who have to witness it. And I'm not talking about the Darwin Awards, presented to the Grand Poobas of Idiocy. I'm talking about everyday dumb.

I work for an institution that employs over 20,000 people. A large number of the employees have multiple advanced degrees from the most esteemed universities across the globe. We're a teaching facility and we employ the best and the brightest. Or so we thought.

We utilize the same phone system that can be seen on the television show, The Office, which is your first clue. It has lots of bells and whistles and one of the advanced features of this system is that you can listen to a phone mail message directly on your computer through your email. It's very convenient when you're checking your messages remotely and don't have access to a phone. The phone system isn't without some glitches and hiccups but you learn to roll with the punches and move forward in a logical manner when something goes wrong.

At approximately 4:29PM, I received an email regarding a "message from an unidentified caller (555-555-5555), with the text "TESTING". It seemed rather self-explanatory to me, a test by our IT department. I deleted the message, minimized my email and continued working on my spreadsheet.

Just about every minute, that small window would pop up in the lower right hand corner of my screen, "You have mail."

I finally decided to check my email again and found no less than 20 emails, all referencing the first email. I looked at the recipient line and noticed that someone had inadvertently sent it to ALL USERS. Woops. Well, shit happens. I felt bad for the person who accidentally hit ALL but not as bad as I did for the person whose phone number was referenced in the email.

I proceeded to scroll through a plethora of emails as more and more entered my inbox. They were from people who had either called this person or just wanted to REPLY TO ALL that they had no idea what this email was about.

"Is someone handling this?", Director, Accounting Department

"???????", Manager, Credentialing

"I'm not sure what's going on", Senior VP

"Note to all-stop hitting reply to all", Staff Development Coordinator

"I got this, too", Manager, Graduate Medical Education, MBA

"Why am I getting this message?", Financial Assistance Liaison

"Please don't hit reply to all", Senior VP Finance and Operations, CPA, MBA

"STOP REPLYING ALL", Assistant to the Chairman

"Stop including me in your emails. I don't have time to delete this." Medical Assistant

And my favorite: "I think the phones are going crazy!", Psychiatry Department

Now, keep in mind that all of these responses were sent TO ALL. I guess they don't see the irony in that.

After about the one hundredth message, I wanted to reply TO ALL, "You're all a bunch of stupid idiots!!" but I thought that might be inappropriate and then I would just become one of them. Instead, I thought I would share this sentiment with you:

Stupid people suck