[Techtalk] The Candle Lighting email and an email shutdown

[Jennifer S. Davis]

Just for background information, I work in a department in the federal
government.  We have about 4000 employees, so we aren't a large
department.  Anyhow, someone had the not so bright idea to send an email
through our exchange server to every single employee asking them to 
light a candle at a certain time.  That was annoying, but it is
understandable as people were caught up in the tragedy in the
US.  It was especialy so as we are across from Parliament and there was 
a large memorial service.  Regardless, someone in our deaperment was
sensitive enough to point out that the US was the true author of this
tragedy and well, that would have been all fine and good had she kept her
opinion to herself, but instead she hit the reply to all button.  Of
course that started a debate that involved the whole bloody department and
well crashed our system.  When the Info Managaement people got involved
asking people to stop forwarding the message, people started forwarding
the message to everyone telling everyone else to stop.

Basically, I was just wanted to share a story that would be funny if the
subject matter wasn't so serious and I was wondering if anyone else
experienced this in ther offices.


Jennifer Davis
jsd at jenn.ca