Introducing Head to Desk since 2003
Yesterday, I came into work to find my inbox full. Well, relatively full, for me, since I don't get a lot of email at work. There has been a spam email going around the agency, one of those that promises that Bill Gates will pay you $245 per person you forward the email to. (This one!) Well, some employee, in a fit of "intelligence," managed to wrap his brain around the mathematics of $245 times the thousand or so people employed by DPSCS and decided to forward the email to every single person in the email address book.
Which, predictably, resulted in others jumping on the bandwagon and clicking Reply All to share in the bounty.
Someone replied to all with the Snopes article about the email.
Someone replied to him (using Reply All, of course), saying, "You better hope you're right!" I mean, gosh, if he's not, he stands to lose out on a quarter million dollars at least!
Finally, someone from IT replied and reminded all of the enthusiastic and soon-to-be-rich and -retired participants in the scam scheme that it violated department policy to use the email system for non-work-related purposes, and all the forwards flying around to everyone in the address book was really taxing the system.
Not like that stopped the email. Next, people started replying (to all, of course), asking to be removed from "the list" or griping about spam. The fact that they themselves had become spammers by their love of that Reply All option amused me but apparently failed to sink past those three inches or so of bone to reach the quivering, jellied mass that stands for a brain.
It perturbs me that these people are considered professionals.
It perturbs me even more that we are the Department of Public Safety, and the same people who will be eagerly checking their mailbox for the next few weeks, looking for that check from Bill Gates, are the same who make decisions about which offenders are and are not allowed back into the community.
There's a comforting thought.
Which, predictably, resulted in others jumping on the bandwagon and clicking Reply All to share in the bounty.
Someone replied to all with the Snopes article about the email.
Someone replied to him (using Reply All, of course), saying, "You better hope you're right!" I mean, gosh, if he's not, he stands to lose out on a quarter million dollars at least!
Finally, someone from IT replied and reminded all of the enthusiastic and soon-to-be-rich and -retired participants in the scam scheme that it violated department policy to use the email system for non-work-related purposes, and all the forwards flying around to everyone in the address book was really taxing the system.
Not like that stopped the email. Next, people started replying (to all, of course), asking to be removed from "the list" or griping about spam. The fact that they themselves had become spammers by their love of that Reply All option amused me but apparently failed to sink past those three inches or so of bone to reach the quivering, jellied mass that stands for a brain.
It perturbs me that these people are considered professionals.
It perturbs me even more that we are the Department of Public Safety, and the same people who will be eagerly checking their mailbox for the next few weeks, looking for that check from Bill Gates, are the same who make decisions about which offenders are and are not allowed back into the community.
There's a comforting thought.