Reply All

You know, it never fails. You go on vacation, or just take a couple days off and you come back to hundreds if not thousands of emails. And of course it takes you a while to go through them all and you never know which ones are the important ones until you see them. This is when the problem starts. Here you are being forced to go through all these emails, and 40% of them are Reply Alls from actual issues.

Sure, you need to know an issue happened. And it even helps to know the root cause of it. What I’m talking about here is all the useless chatter that comes after…

“Thanks for your help.”

“Oh sure, my pleasure. Let me know if there’s anything else I can do for you.”

“I will. Thanks again for your help.”

“You’re welcome.”

Come on people, is all this chatter really necessary for Reply All? Do the rest of us really have to hear this? What’s your goal here… is it to thank the guy, or to let everyone see you being as polite as you can? And remember, while you’re being polite to that one guy, you’re being pretty rude to everyone else.

Coming back from a couple days off is bad enough, but what about those of us who do on-call support? When I get pulled out of bed and resolve the issue, I typically want to go back to bed and not hear another word until there’s another problem. Instead, what I get is another hour of pleasantries. Because remember, being on call means that you have to look at your email every time it goes off. Seriously people, is it really necessary?

I tend to be pretty militant in my guarding of the silence. I personally don’t reply all to simple issues, nor do I reply all once the issue is closed. And I usually make it pretty clear to people who do that it’s not acceptable behavior. For those who have never had to do after hours support, they just don’t get it. I’ve even gone so far as to call someone every time he hit reply all for something stupid. The confusion on the other end of the line is usually priceless.

“Why did you call me?”

“Well there’s an issue. You just sent me an email.”

“No, I was just telling him thanks for helping me.”

“Then why did you include me and get me out of bed for it.”

“I was just being polite.”

“To whom? Because I have to get up every time email goes off, so I figured there was another problem since you got me and everyone else on support up.”

“I didn’t realize you had to get up.”

“You complain when we don’t answer issues in the middle of the night, so how did you figure that happened if we’re not getting up when email goes off?”

“Well, again, I was just being polite.”

“OK, well do you call a meeting with everyone in the office just to thank someone for their help in person?”

…etc.

You guys get the point. It’s actually a pretty gross breach of support etiquette to reply all for things that have no business going to everyone. Like I said above, it’s the same as calling a meeting with everyone in the dept just to carry on a simple conversation with the guy who sits next to you.

I’ve actually worked in places where everyone in the group got upset if they didn’t hear every last word no matter how insignificant. I can remember being called into the boss’s office to be asked why I refuse to include everyone on emails. And when I explained that I just don’t like to bother everyone with every word I say, I got a lecture on what it means to be a team player. It’s funny sometimes the limited focus some people have.

I’ve also been on the front end of building a support organization where nobody was used to having to take these things into consideration. And what I’ve found is that people don’t even think about things like this. What’s worse is even when they’re getting woken up for no reason, it still never crosses their minds to limit the email traffic.

The answer is simple courtesy. Even if you don’t have a support staff responsible for answering every email that comes across, it’s just simple courtesy to not force everyone to listen to your chatter. Hey, email all you want to whomever you want. Just don’t make me listen to it.

I put this on the same level as going to a meeting and leaving your phone riger on high on your desk, and going home for the evening with your source code checked out.