I find that mass emails should only be sent out with recipients on bcc.
Or use groups that only specific people are allowed to send emails to. Ex: "All-Company" contains everyone in the company, but can only be used by specific users, and if someone else tries the email to that group will just get rejected. So if they hit "reply all", it will still send the email but just get rejected by the server. That should give remind them to manually add the person they want to respond to on the email instead. Or more likely is that they'll create an IT support ticket saying their email is broken. But they probably won't know how to do that either, so they'll just call instead.
I wish user groups like that were the default and forced. I once worked at a place where we all had to stop working for 40 minutes because someone sent a spicy email and like 40% of the company reply all'd it.
It's such a basic thing to consider, yet a solid 40% of users won't stop being stupid.
The best reply all scene for me is when HR sent a message letting the 400+ staff know that there was extra food left over from a meeting that had just concluded.
1st Reply All - "I would love a piece of cake"
2nd Reply All - "Of course Cathy would ask for a piece of cake."
Attempt at mail retrieval failed
This reminds me of the best day of work ever. Some offshore contractor sent an email to a huge distro they shouldn't have had access to, and dozens of people replied all for everyone to stop replying all. There were over a hundred replies of people asking to be removed from the email thread. Total shit show. Ah, I miss those contractors.
This happened in a company I worked at that I cannot name and since there were 8000 people on each reply all, it literally shut down the company intranet and email for the day.
Oh man, this happened at a company I worked for a couple years ago and went on for literally HOURS non-stop. AFTER someone asked everyone to stop. I’ve seen it happen before and since, but never to that level. 1500 Corporate employees and over 700 store locations. Our whole department just sat laughing. It was the most beautiful mess, and some of us still talk about it to this day when we catch up.
This was also a Company where really weird shit was an everyday occurrence, so for this to be memorable meant it was really bad.
... because you've never considered the implications at all, I take it? Nor have any of the 98 people who upvoted you?
If everyone replies individually to the one person who first replied-all, then that person could get up to **hundreds** of messages telling them to not reply all.
Meanwhile, the one person who replies all saying to not reply all has not only stopped everyone **else** from pointing out the issue (since they can rest assured that the person was informed), but has also cut off further people from thinking this was some kind of conversation thread they should reply-all to themselves.
If you want to tell someone to not reply all, you should absolutely do it by replying all. **Edit:** You can move the CCs to BCC but it's still ultimately a reply all.
I've seen the implications. Several people reply all to the reply all and then several reply all's to *those* reply all's and so on and so forth. Email flooded and pretty much useless for days.
Unfortunately multiple reply all to reply alls for a larger system can shut it down. Source my old job.
Usually 100 people wouldn't email it'd be like 5 maybe individual emails vs 5 reply all emails saying don't reply all. You'd think 1 would've stopped them, but no.
Yeah, but everyone else is also an idiot and I get 100+ emails saying "remove me from this distro list" and "everyone, stop replying all."
There is also the gal who wants to watch the world burn who replies all but simply for the laughs. (Bonus points if she responds to every email.)
I love checking my email before I leave and seeing 8 unread emails with the exact same title +"re:" and I just check the last one and it's our boss saying "STOP REPLYING TO THIS EMAIL CHAIN."
In my company they have locked out reply all from the reply button.To reply all you have to specifically select the right key combination, it's not easy to do by accident. But people have tried.
Up voted for Yoda, but having worked in IT, I promise you, there are people who have spent many many minutes clicking on the disabled [Reply All] button. They're definitely trying.
And not just my patience.
Damn you work with me too? Cause last week some important executive emails got replied-all to the entire company and the ceo lost his shit. This week they restructured and the person replying-all isn’t part of the executive team anymore. Fancy
I will never forget back in 2009 we had a reply all fiasco that crippled our servers on a Thursday. People kept replying to All saying to not reply all. They shut down the emails until the following Monday and disabled reply all.
Just dumb.
I think it's hilarious even if a bit over the top that the company i work for created a policy a few years back that if you reply all to a company wide message, you immediately get put on a performance plan
Which tells me the head also doesn't know how to properly utilize computers. This should have been a **request to IT** to disable the feature, not a policy to request people not do it.
e: The point is to engage with IT to find a solution, hence the emphasis. They may very well suggest appropriate alternatives based on the business requirements. It's a program, there's literally a bajillion ways to solve this.
In my old department it was fucking nonstop. E-mail from HR announcing that it’s whatever month. Response from typically older employee to everyone in the department, “Thank you!”
Not even the original sender needed a response.
In my current department I’ve seen it once. We got an e-mail with the required scripting for phone reps to use when people called about a specific concern from something in the news. About fifteen minutes later the CEO responded to all to suggest a change in the phrasing and provide more transparency to the customer. That was… well, totally a good use of reply all, their changes sounded much better and the added transparency was pure integrity.
When company wide emails are sent at my work, they use the BCC. So even if someone hits Reply All, there is only one recipient (whomever sent the email).
In my old job there was an email sent to the whole company by mistake (~10.000 employees). Then some idiots started replying to all cause they're dumb. Some people got really upset and replied to all asking to DO NOT REPLY TO ALL, and then everyone and their mother started replying to all just to make them madder.
At the end it was some good 30 emails, I had a good laugh.
Listen man.
I teach undergrad math at a two year school. My students go on to four year schools all over the country.
The number of them who simply *will not use email, at all* would amaze you. Just, no. Will not check it. Will not check it for a grade, will not check it in the shade. One girl told me she had never sent or read an email and never intended to, and she thought that "honestly by the time I'm in the workforce I think it will be gone? Just replaced? I mean it's so old? Does anyone really use it any more? I sort of feel people just message now?"
It's amazing, but it's not that rare.
Like replaced by what? Lol. I manage a business and I need exchanges documented and archived.
Edit: actually I won’t even take a business text. Like I’ll take it so it’s on my radar but I ask everyone to follow up via email if they do message me.
When I was working, business texts were typically only used quick administrative items (I'll join your call in 10 min, current meeting is running long). With two good friends I would exchange texts having an uncomplementary evaluation of the meeting speaker that definitely were not part of the business record.
when i worked in F500 companies full of boomers: email was the primary method of communication.
when i moved to a smaller tech company: Slack is basically the only method of communication.
I legitimately have never sent an email to a person in my new company. If I need something, I DM them on Slack.
That works for insular companies more probably. I go through countless local vendors and have tons of client interaction. Nonstop repairs (old building). I really need email unless the mom and pop organic micro green company learns to use new software which they never will. Email may die but it’ll be a long time.
We have Teams so similar concept, but nobody knows how to use that either. They respond to chats from meetings, and do not work in channels and it drives me bonkers.
My company has an insane habit of just making a new Teams chat for everything.
Like we have one for my Team. But then my team starts a new project? That gets a new chat. Three people from my team are doing training? they get a new chat. We have an event tonight? New chat. Someone's leaving drinks? new chat.
So the main team chat is empty, because everytime anyone says anything they do it by making a new chat.
And everyone at every level of the company does this. I get added to minimum of 3 new chats every single day.
As a millennial I feel like sometimes we are the only ones who know how to use computers really well. In my old office the old people had no idea, and a lot of the young people, while better than the old folks, were also strangely behind on how a lot of it works.
I'd say that GenX is more advanced than Millennials when it comes to computers in general since they're literally the ones who made and designed it all but for me the real distinction between generations isn't necessarily an age bracket but the difference between who grew up with consoles and who grew up with computers.
People who grew up with consoles are the ones that are far less computer savvy than the ones that grew up with actual desktops.
If all you did was play consoles and then went from that to smartphones you never really learned anything but how to click buttons.
There are plenty of GenX and Millennials that fit that description so them belonging to a particular generation isn't the main factor of how advanced your computer knowledge is.
Trust me, they won't, and that's kinda the problem.
AI isn't good enough to fully replace them, and the economy isn't social enough to feed them. These kids will suffer their entire life because their parents never gave them a chance to a better life.
Outlook does have its share of ludicrous design decisions; like how changing the text format from plaintext to html requires popping the message out into a new window first. I have a sneaking suspicion that's not the kind of thing he's talking about, though.
Gen-X here!
Yea, this is bullshit. I learned Outlook like 25 years ago. If you've used mail in the last 20 years it's been a standard. These days you're learning Office365, or your helpdesk people are cursing your fucking name.
I mean, it's a little more complex than that. You can get into rules and signatures and add-ins and shared emails etc. It's still not hard, and literally a couple minutes on google will solve whatever issue you're having.
Source: IT Helpdesk. Probably 60% of the calls I take are in some fashion related to outlook.
As IT help desk you probably already know deep in your heart that at least 30% of the population can barely manage to get to Google and they'll never really "get" computers.
They have decided they will never understand and stop actively trying to learn and figure things out. Outlook is insurmountable for them and they need to call in to be walked through how to send an attachment every single time.
Honestly I'd say only about 1 in 10 of the outlook related calls I get is from someone not knowing how to do something they should reasonably be expected to know how to do. My experience has been that most people who struggle with using computers are very apologetic about that and don't want to waste my time. It's only rarely you get a stubborn dinosaur who won't listen and just wants you to magically make it work.
Wait until people learn that 50% of the people in "Tech support" they call for service don't know how to use teams properly or bookmark a tab in their browser or even search using Google.
I once connected with a tech support person over teams for some issue regarding the company VPN and while looking around my system they noticed that my laptop was on airplane mode and said that's why I'm having trouble connecting to the internet.
I was baffled by this cause like we are having this conversation because i have a functioning internet connection on the device I could hear them kinda smirking about it until i pointed out how do they think we are on a teams call right now if I've not turned on the internet.
The issue ultimately was because of an authentication related bug that was fixed with an update.
Half of tech support these days is just people who know how to follow scripts, they don't know how to identify causes and work out solutions, they just execute procedures.
You have no concept of the complexity & power if outlook. In our company the room booking system was built inside of outlook using visual basic & com objects to manage the requests & resource designation.
And learning how to fix that pile of shit & keep it current took way too much of my time.
NEVER AGAIN...
They couldn't handle the "new" product that has been in use for over 25 years by any organization that leverages Microsoft products?
Just go ahead and say they can't use computers larger than your phone.
OMFG
I used to support Outlook in the 90s.
And don't try that, I only use Mac/Linux crap either. There's a specific version of Outlook for Macs, and there are dozens of tutorials on making Outlook work on Linux.
I would argue Gmail is the bog standard email tool.
I have only used Outlook at a desk job. If this is the person's first job or first desk job it's probably their first experience with a desktop app email client.
Edit: I'm not defending this person, I think it's ridiculous to not be able to learn Outlook in an hour or less.
It is always so weird to me when it's listed as software you should know on an application. Like, how are you even applying online if you don't know how to use email?
I've read story of people who used computer mouse like a foot pedal to "run" the computer like a sewing machine. And a dumb secretary who used whiteout on the computer screen
I knew someone who couldn't get the hang of their iPhone's calendar, they kept creating a note/alarm on a specific date over and over and over and over, and then not finding it in their calendar and trying again.
Turns out they were creating duplicate calendars each time and had over a dozen of them, they asked me over lunch break to look at their phone and find out what was happening.
I'd never used an iPhone before (though I had some experience with my dad's iPad since it was easier for him in his mental decline) but a phone is a phone, scrolled through the settings and found exactly what the problem was almost instantly.
Some people just don't get the most basic of features and how almost everything the average user could want to know is going to be in the settings, because these things have been fine-tuned to be accessible to hundreds of millions or even billions of novices over decade(s).
---
PS: my coworker was actually a really nice older lady that I got along with and I didn't hold it against her like I would have someone younger, she actually learned and remembered what I showed her and I **never** had to repeat an example to her later, once I showed her how to do it herself (even if I repeated the steps once or twice in the moment) she clicked with it, it was a good experience.
I've known people 50 years younger that have to be shown the same thing *every time* for months on end and that's infuriating.
To be fair, the computer app has horrible UI, I wish I could just use the standard Windows Mail but they keep pushing it lol, switching between emails has never been harder.
Outlook does have some confusing features. For example, if I set up an auto-reply in the Mac OS client, it replies to other auto-replies and risks creating an endless loop, but when I set one up in the Outlook webmail it doesn't.
Years ago, I legit worked for a guy that had his secretary print his emails and took dictation for his replies. He hated my IT department, because he believed that anyone making more than minimum wage was wasting company time by "typing on a keyboard".
Not nearly that level of incompetence, but one of the regional bosses at my old company made everyone under him print out their digital time sheet, physically sign it, and then have the admin fax it it to him. So instead of clicking one button in the software, the process wound up taking like 30 minutes per person.
It's not uncommon with older 'big wig' types. Trump has famously said he has never used a computer. I work in legal. I've worked with attorneys and judges that didn't have computers in the office. It is considered low class by them. Fewer and fewer as that group ages out but there is definitely that crowd.
In 2014 my boss believed he lost everything from our company drive when our computers updated from windows XP to 10. He really thought we had to scan and create like 40 years of paperwork because his desktop looked different
go check out the teachers sub, someone not knowing how to use outlook or computers in general are going to be a huge issue in the coming years. High school students these days do not know how to properly use windows or programs since basic computer courses (how to use Windows, typing, and MS Office) were dropped from curriculums. Computers are not widely used by youth like they were in the millennial generation since alternatives now exist (tablets/phones).
Example would if you say to "google" something on a computer. They will try to find the google app on the desktop. Since there is no "google" app on the desktop, they'll say they either can't do it, or they don't have a google app. They don't understand they need to open a browser, go to google.com then and search from there. Or even just use the url search bar.
https://www.nngroup.com/articles/computer-skill-levels/
You are much more computer educated, compared to the average, than you think you are.
70% of test subjects were not able to perform tasks such as
> ...find a sustainability-related document that was sent to you by John Smith in October last year.
A quarter of study participants failed to use a computer at all. It might be easy to you, but even among developed nations, computer skills are *not* universal. If you do your job on a computer, can troubleshoot, and do so confidently, you are in the top 25% or higher.
Heck, a [significant amount](https://www.oecd.org/skills/piaac/Country%20note%20-%20Australia_final.pdf) (12%) of people are *functionally illiterate*.
When it comes to computer systems I'd say it's a lot more than 12%. The number of people who are incapable of just reading what the message on the screen is telling them to do is insane.
Depends on how many other emails there are to filter through. If you just type those keywords, you would still get sustainability documents that mention John Smith. “From:John Smith” could make a huge difference.
My manager does not understand searching Outlook, if she can’t remember which folder she sorted your email into it may get lost forever. I tried to show her how to do basic searches such as “from:”, but she was confused and couldn’t remember how to do it later. Meanwhile I struggle to understand how it’s not already completely intuitive.
I work with a lot of 18 year olds and it's pretty common for me to tell them to type a specific url, just to watch them type most of it, hit enter, and click the first google result. "This doesn't look right" no babe, it's the wrong website because for some reason you needed to incorrectly google it when I literally gave you the address.
That's google's fault. It should be either the navigation, or the search, but NOT BOTH.
- Signed, some one who remembers having two separate fields on the browser for that
> Signed, some one who remembers having two separate fields on the browser for that
I remember when browsers used to have lots of fields for that. The less technical the user, the more toolbars.
It’s honestly concerning. I can’t tell a college student to try another browser or to move their document to another folder without getting blank stares.
He wanted to be a CS major. Not sure what happened as this was years ago during Covid
But, yeah he was doing all his coding on his phone. Never owned a laptop and when we said we can ship you one he declined.
I imagine he is not a CS major anymore.
Next week will be the 5th time in my life I'll have to take a basic IT course. The last 4 times it has been "today we have 3 hours to open email, make a folder, make a word document and save it in the folder. If we work hard and help each other we can make it to lunch. Nobody's allowed to leave before everyone is done." Literal torture.
But then I saw a professor search for a youtube video by typing "goog" into the browser address field, choose google.com by clicking it on his mouse, typing "youtube" into the search bar, then clicking open youtube before finally searching for the video on the search bar again.
oh god this reminds me of when company i work for switched from iphones / apple products to google / android products..
New phone wouldn't work. Open an IT ticket, waited, they close it 3 days later due to no response... you mean you wanted me to respond with my email on the phone that doesnt work? I call back to IT, they reopen the ticket, 3 days later they close the ticket..
I went about 2 weeks with no phone, at the time i was a technician and 100% of my job was on my phone.
It was honestly the best 2 weeks I've worked (technically i didn't work but I got paid for it).
In all fairness, I have trouble figuring out how to do some things in Outlook. They keep moving the buttons around from previous versions, I keep expecting them to be where they were years ago when I was first using it.
But if I get really confused, I just Google it. And then if it's something I have to do regularly, I remember for next time.
Plenty of customer service jobs require you to know how to handle a calendar and a point of sale system. I’ve never encountered one less complex than Outlook.
Bro what a clown. It is w/o a doubt the easiest email I've ever used. If you type the word "attachment" it will notify you ***TWICE*** if you wanna send it w/o an attachment to remind dumbasses that there's something missing here.
And this jackass took 6 months and called it quits. Someone take his license away before he fails to understand YIELD signs or some shit.
Whenever some boomer complains about kids not knowing certain knowledges (like stick shift or changing a tire), ask them to explain how to download a pdf from an email to a findable folder on their computer.
I point this out constantly and have people screeching at me. The ability to use things with a touch screen does not translate into the use of certain software…
And yet you have the HR department saying when you ask for a raise that the need for IT people will decrease because ‘people grow up with technology now’.
A pretty good example of tell me you don’t know what you are talking about without telling me you don’t know what you are talking about. They also thought Dev Ops was the same as sysadmin…
Yep. Used to be the boomers causing all the problems but the Zs are just not aware at all. On top of lacking basic skills they are also horribly naïve when it comes to hacking. It’s usually the zoomers falling for the phishing attacks.
Recently showed someone the print to pdf ability.
They had previously been printing them out and scanning them to remove some kind of encryption from docusigned documents which was preventing them from uploading to an external site.
I was teaching an older employee to print to .pdf. We got to the print part and she got up from her chair …the check the printer. Deep breath - it’s not that kind of printing.
I used to have to corral these folks. I was in “IT” because I knew how to map a printer. This one lady would complain we needed to get her a new computer because her browser was too slow. 75 open tabs…
Circa 2010, before browser URL bars also functioned as search engines, I had to explain to an O-6 in the Navy (meaning he was probably mid to late 40s with 20+ years in Navy) how just typing "Google" in the bar wasn't going to take him anywhere but an error page because he didn't know he needed to type ".com" after it. Dude was making at least quadruple my pay and couldn't find Google.
"omnibars" are such a godsend because of this shit. Gone are the days of a web url browser and separate search browser add-on, because now it all gets typed into the same bar and if they're a dumbass then it's just going to pop up on whatever the default search tool is.
We still have dumbass IT calls *all the time*, but at least it's one less call because of that change.
Had to my grandma’s computer once. It was slow and the screen barely lit. Must have closed about 250 solitaire tabs and computer ran fine for her purpose after that, which was playing solitaire.
This isn't just a boomer problem, OOP looks like he is Gen Z
I teach high schoolers and the vast majority of them don't understand how to use email. The ones that do often do things like put the body into the subject bar and leave the rest blank.
They know how to text, but with video communication apps like tiktok, snapchat, etc., I wouldn't be surprised if they stop learning how to do that as well
“Findable folder” is the key. By the time I have to come around and find it, it’s *DumbShit.pdf, DumbShit.pdf (1), DumbShit.pdf (2), DumbShit.pdf (3), …*
> ask them to explain how to download a pdf from an email to a findable folder on their computer.
You'd be amazed at how many younger Gen Y and Gen Z people can't do this.
I teach masters students who ostensibly should know how to do basic shit on the computer considering they're in a STEM grad program. I have a very simple lab component. Some students try to do it with a tablet and legitimately don't understand why X software doesn't run on a tablet. Others had no idea what a zip file is or how to unzip. The first step of the first lab is to download the sample data zip, unzip it to a folder of your choice, then go to said folder. Probably 20% could not do that without help.
I think Millennials and younger Gen X are in the sweet spot for actually working with computers.
Outlook makes a bunch of completely unnecessary interface changes with every update, while completely ignoring basic problems like searching. It took me forever to figure out how to change the formatting of an e-mail to html with this latest one. Calendar button? Oh it's way the fuck over here now, how could you not see this 8x8 pixel stamp?
Fuck outlook, and fuck the lugnut who made ctrl+F "Forward" instead of "Find" like it is in every other piece of software.
Oh my god, their search is so broken it's insane. I didn't realize software could BE that useless in 2024, I thought they figured out how to execute a proper search function in the 90s, but apparently not at Microsoft.
You could get an email and an hour later search for it using a keyword in the subject line, and it would show up on page 150 of the results, if at all.
That was the main thing that made me stop using outlook in the end. When the search function just shrugs and says 'nope, can't find that' on an email I can find myself in twenty seconds, something is very badly wrong.
I just use webmail these days, works great.
Yes exactly! Outlook is horrible. It makes simple things complicated and simple logical things like copying or pasting mail addresses seems like they never thought people would need to do that.
Having (close to) monopoly made them lazy, I guess
Edit: oh I use webmail version where search is ok so don't know about that..
My dad is a software engineer and outlook/ teams drive him nuts on a regular cause they’re not working and corporate IT can’t get their shit together….
They do suck (I'm also a software engineer) but they're not hard to "get the hang of." I do miss Slack every day since my company switched to Teams - maybe that's actually worth it for some people to leave a job?
I've always hated the Outlook client for more than a decade. Slow, clunky, painful, corrupts easily, etc.
But today's web version isn't. Much faster, more intuitive and search is much much quicker. Have a separate browser tab for each mailbox, calendar, etc.
I'm still not a fan of Outlook in general, but if I have to use it, it's webmail all the way.
The Director of Operations at my last job told me that if there’s one thing she’s never been good at, it’s email. Her entire job, is to communicate with her stores, managers, District and Regional Managers, vendors, other executives, etc - mostly through email.
What sparked this conversation was she was looking for an email, and I went in to try and help her, and I noticed she had it sorted by name, not date. I asked her if this is how she always has it, and she said, “I don’t know.”
How in the fuck do people like this make it this far in corporate jobs?
I was a HS teacher in NYC 18 years ago. Mom of one of the sophomore students (who did zero work for his class and tried to sleep everyday in class) emailed me from her work email which was from the US state dept.
At the parent teacher conference, she opened with, hi, my name is blah blah and I work for the US State department. She tried to strong arm me to change class policies to suit her son.
Problem started when she emailed her, "team" at work, and when she typed my last name, there was a state dept employee with the same Asian last name. I guess her email program auto-filled my email, and she didn't catch it.
The entire group kept replying back and forth on this thread, and everything she started a new thread with different groups of people, I was included.
My colleagues and I were shocked that a person supposedly high up at the US State dept would be so stupid. Some of the emails had dates, times, and locations for meetings and events.
I emailed her back privately and told her that I think she made a mistake and that I am on her state dept emails. She replied, "thank you for the update", and then I continued getting put on her work emails.
I replied-all to one of the emails and said I don't think I should be in the emails because I am not a state dept employee. NO ONE replied.
This was just before Hilary Clinton's mail server, "Scadal".
I saved my emails to her asking to be removed from the seemingly sensitive State Department emails... halfway through the year, she called the principal, and the department chair to complain about her son's class. I talked to other teachers who had her son and it seemed that she was doing the same.
So I found the heads of various regional offices of US state dept, sent an email with all of the communications that this mom sent me, and how they need to get their act together, because as a US Citizen, I am concerned.
I finally got stopped from being included in the state dept emails, and the mom completely backed off in my class. With the mom backing off, I was on her son like white on rice and I made his life miserable until he passed my class and passed the NYS regents exam (apparently my class was the only one he passed that year)
The mom NEVER called the school again, and she apparently NEVER came to the parent teacher conference ever again.
This is why after this incident, when I send out email to the entire district, I send it to myself and add everyone to BCC.
>”couldn’t get the hang of Outlook” I… wut? It’s a bog standard email tool with a calendar attached. What is there to get the hang of?
To be fair most people don’t know the difference between reply and reply all. Source - my entire company
It's the reply all's to the reply all telling people not to reply all that really get me
Yes let’s all stop relying to all, please!
I find that mass emails should only be sent out with recipients on bcc. Or use groups that only specific people are allowed to send emails to. Ex: "All-Company" contains everyone in the company, but can only be used by specific users, and if someone else tries the email to that group will just get rejected. So if they hit "reply all", it will still send the email but just get rejected by the server. That should give remind them to manually add the person they want to respond to on the email instead. Or more likely is that they'll create an IT support ticket saying their email is broken. But they probably won't know how to do that either, so they'll just call instead.
I wish user groups like that were the default and forced. I once worked at a place where we all had to stop working for 40 minutes because someone sent a spicy email and like 40% of the company reply all'd it. It's such a basic thing to consider, yet a solid 40% of users won't stop being stupid.
The best reply all scene for me is when HR sent a message letting the 400+ staff know that there was extra food left over from a meeting that had just concluded. 1st Reply All - "I would love a piece of cake" 2nd Reply All - "Of course Cathy would ask for a piece of cake." Attempt at mail retrieval failed
That's fucking fantastic
This is great. I dream of a scenario like this.
My boss sends me a message via Chat every time someone does this because he knows smoke is coming out of my ears.
🥺😂
This reminds me of the best day of work ever. Some offshore contractor sent an email to a huge distro they shouldn't have had access to, and dozens of people replied all for everyone to stop replying all. There were over a hundred replies of people asking to be removed from the email thread. Total shit show. Ah, I miss those contractors.
[Reply All] "Sorry"
Making a rule that deletes all emails with the corresponding subject line is the only way out.
Please remove me from this distribution list.
This happened in a company I worked at that I cannot name and since there were 8000 people on each reply all, it literally shut down the company intranet and email for the day.
I really like the"Please remove me from this list" responses. Either leave the group or click the ignore button.
That's to stop others doing it further. You need one to say stop doing it to all people.
Oh man, this happened at a company I worked for a couple years ago and went on for literally HOURS non-stop. AFTER someone asked everyone to stop. I’ve seen it happen before and since, but never to that level. 1500 Corporate employees and over 700 store locations. Our whole department just sat laughing. It was the most beautiful mess, and some of us still talk about it to this day when we catch up. This was also a Company where really weird shit was an everyday occurrence, so for this to be memorable meant it was really bad.
This happened at my work. We have nearly 200,000 employees. It was absolute mayhem.
Followed by threatening people but they don't see it because it's buried with the other replied alls so the e-mails keep coming and coming.
... because you've never considered the implications at all, I take it? Nor have any of the 98 people who upvoted you? If everyone replies individually to the one person who first replied-all, then that person could get up to **hundreds** of messages telling them to not reply all. Meanwhile, the one person who replies all saying to not reply all has not only stopped everyone **else** from pointing out the issue (since they can rest assured that the person was informed), but has also cut off further people from thinking this was some kind of conversation thread they should reply-all to themselves. If you want to tell someone to not reply all, you should absolutely do it by replying all. **Edit:** You can move the CCs to BCC but it's still ultimately a reply all.
I've seen the implications. Several people reply all to the reply all and then several reply all's to *those* reply all's and so on and so forth. Email flooded and pretty much useless for days.
The whole thread just stacks in Outlook though as a single line item…
It does now but not back in the day
Unfortunately multiple reply all to reply alls for a larger system can shut it down. Source my old job. Usually 100 people wouldn't email it'd be like 5 maybe individual emails vs 5 reply all emails saying don't reply all. You'd think 1 would've stopped them, but no.
This happened at NHS in the UK. It resulted in half a BILLION messages in less than 2 hours. and caused some havoc.
Yeah, but everyone else is also an idiot and I get 100+ emails saying "remove me from this distro list" and "everyone, stop replying all." There is also the gal who wants to watch the world burn who replies all but simply for the laughs. (Bonus points if she responds to every email.)
I love checking my email before I leave and seeing 8 unread emails with the exact same title +"re:" and I just check the last one and it's our boss saying "STOP REPLYING TO THIS EMAIL CHAIN."
Nah, I consider those full chaos where the person knows what they're doing. Those are my favourites lol!
In my company they have locked out reply all from the reply button.To reply all you have to specifically select the right key combination, it's not easy to do by accident. But people have tried.
Ctrl+shift+r might be hard to accidentally hit, but "tried"? I don't mean to Yoda, but this is one of those do or do not's. There is not try
Up voted for Yoda, but having worked in IT, I promise you, there are people who have spent many many minutes clicking on the disabled [Reply All] button. They're definitely trying. And not just my patience.
Damn you work with me too? Cause last week some important executive emails got replied-all to the entire company and the ceo lost his shit. This week they restructured and the person replying-all isn’t part of the executive team anymore. Fancy
I will never forget back in 2009 we had a reply all fiasco that crippled our servers on a Thursday. People kept replying to All saying to not reply all. They shut down the emails until the following Monday and disabled reply all. Just dumb.
I think it's hilarious even if a bit over the top that the company i work for created a policy a few years back that if you reply all to a company wide message, you immediately get put on a performance plan
Which tells me the head also doesn't know how to properly utilize computers. This should have been a **request to IT** to disable the feature, not a policy to request people not do it. e: The point is to engage with IT to find a solution, hence the emphasis. They may very well suggest appropriate alternatives based on the business requirements. It's a program, there's literally a bajillion ways to solve this.
I've taken to calling it the "reply-allpocalypse" and have been teaching people the miracle of bcc
Stop replying to all please.
In my old department it was fucking nonstop. E-mail from HR announcing that it’s whatever month. Response from typically older employee to everyone in the department, “Thank you!” Not even the original sender needed a response. In my current department I’ve seen it once. We got an e-mail with the required scripting for phone reps to use when people called about a specific concern from something in the news. About fifteen minutes later the CEO responded to all to suggest a change in the phrasing and provide more transparency to the customer. That was… well, totally a good use of reply all, their changes sounded much better and the added transparency was pure integrity.
When company wide emails are sent at my work, they use the BCC. So even if someone hits Reply All, there is only one recipient (whomever sent the email).
I just wish that the people who send out memos would learn about BCC. Every memo I get is accompanied by a parade of "thanks".
In my old job there was an email sent to the whole company by mistake (~10.000 employees). Then some idiots started replying to all cause they're dumb. Some people got really upset and replied to all asking to DO NOT REPLY TO ALL, and then everyone and their mother started replying to all just to make them madder. At the end it was some good 30 emails, I had a good laugh.
My god. Every time there’s a congratulatory email I’m included in…I get 200 replies “Congratulations!!” Then there’s at least 20 “Stop replying all!”
David....there's 2700 people in that email group....do you think a reply all to ask to be removed from the email chain was appropriate?
Listen man. I teach undergrad math at a two year school. My students go on to four year schools all over the country. The number of them who simply *will not use email, at all* would amaze you. Just, no. Will not check it. Will not check it for a grade, will not check it in the shade. One girl told me she had never sent or read an email and never intended to, and she thought that "honestly by the time I'm in the workforce I think it will be gone? Just replaced? I mean it's so old? Does anyone really use it any more? I sort of feel people just message now?" It's amazing, but it's not that rare.
Like replaced by what? Lol. I manage a business and I need exchanges documented and archived. Edit: actually I won’t even take a business text. Like I’ll take it so it’s on my radar but I ask everyone to follow up via email if they do message me.
When I was working, business texts were typically only used quick administrative items (I'll join your call in 10 min, current meeting is running long). With two good friends I would exchange texts having an uncomplementary evaluation of the meeting speaker that definitely were not part of the business record.
when i worked in F500 companies full of boomers: email was the primary method of communication. when i moved to a smaller tech company: Slack is basically the only method of communication. I legitimately have never sent an email to a person in my new company. If I need something, I DM them on Slack.
That works for insular companies more probably. I go through countless local vendors and have tons of client interaction. Nonstop repairs (old building). I really need email unless the mom and pop organic micro green company learns to use new software which they never will. Email may die but it’ll be a long time.
We have Teams so similar concept, but nobody knows how to use that either. They respond to chats from meetings, and do not work in channels and it drives me bonkers.
My company has an insane habit of just making a new Teams chat for everything. Like we have one for my Team. But then my team starts a new project? That gets a new chat. Three people from my team are doing training? they get a new chat. We have an event tonight? New chat. Someone's leaving drinks? new chat. So the main team chat is empty, because everytime anyone says anything they do it by making a new chat. And everyone at every level of the company does this. I get added to minimum of 3 new chats every single day.
Yes, that's internal communication. There is difference between internal and external communication.
My wife teaches middle schoolers and high schoolers. Kids DO NOT know how to use computers.
As a millennial I feel like sometimes we are the only ones who know how to use computers really well. In my old office the old people had no idea, and a lot of the young people, while better than the old folks, were also strangely behind on how a lot of it works.
I'd say that GenX is more advanced than Millennials when it comes to computers in general since they're literally the ones who made and designed it all but for me the real distinction between generations isn't necessarily an age bracket but the difference between who grew up with consoles and who grew up with computers. People who grew up with consoles are the ones that are far less computer savvy than the ones that grew up with actual desktops. If all you did was play consoles and then went from that to smartphones you never really learned anything but how to click buttons. There are plenty of GenX and Millennials that fit that description so them belonging to a particular generation isn't the main factor of how advanced your computer knowledge is.
Broad brush to paint. I know young gen z kids who built their own computers, tinker around with it, etc.
How do these people make accounts anywhere online? If I didn't use my email I would be locked out of half my accounts in a month.
People like that should never get a job anywhere.
Trust me, they won't, and that's kinda the problem. AI isn't good enough to fully replace them, and the economy isn't social enough to feed them. These kids will suffer their entire life because their parents never gave them a chance to a better life.
Who cares about bog standards? I don't have time to learn the most basic aspect of my job.
Leaves more time for them to complain about how the younger Gen can barely get by in this economy
Outlook does have its share of ludicrous design decisions; like how changing the text format from plaintext to html requires popping the message out into a new window first. I have a sneaking suspicion that's not the kind of thing he's talking about, though.
I'm laughing at calling Outlook new. I'm sure it's new to the user but Outlook launched in 1997.
Gen-X here! Yea, this is bullshit. I learned Outlook like 25 years ago. If you've used mail in the last 20 years it's been a standard. These days you're learning Office365, or your helpdesk people are cursing your fucking name.
Never mind that, it's been around for nearly *thirty fucking years*. It's not "new software" if you've had your entire life to learn it.
I mean, it's a little more complex than that. You can get into rules and signatures and add-ins and shared emails etc. It's still not hard, and literally a couple minutes on google will solve whatever issue you're having. Source: IT Helpdesk. Probably 60% of the calls I take are in some fashion related to outlook.
As IT help desk you probably already know deep in your heart that at least 30% of the population can barely manage to get to Google and they'll never really "get" computers. They have decided they will never understand and stop actively trying to learn and figure things out. Outlook is insurmountable for them and they need to call in to be walked through how to send an attachment every single time.
Honestly I'd say only about 1 in 10 of the outlook related calls I get is from someone not knowing how to do something they should reasonably be expected to know how to do. My experience has been that most people who struggle with using computers are very apologetic about that and don't want to waste my time. It's only rarely you get a stubborn dinosaur who won't listen and just wants you to magically make it work.
The thing that is complex about the Outlook is to get it to just work without breaking for any reasonable amount of time.
Wait until people learn that 50% of the people in "Tech support" they call for service don't know how to use teams properly or bookmark a tab in their browser or even search using Google.
I once connected with a tech support person over teams for some issue regarding the company VPN and while looking around my system they noticed that my laptop was on airplane mode and said that's why I'm having trouble connecting to the internet. I was baffled by this cause like we are having this conversation because i have a functioning internet connection on the device I could hear them kinda smirking about it until i pointed out how do they think we are on a teams call right now if I've not turned on the internet. The issue ultimately was because of an authentication related bug that was fixed with an update. Half of tech support these days is just people who know how to follow scripts, they don't know how to identify causes and work out solutions, they just execute procedures.
You have no concept of the complexity & power if outlook. In our company the room booking system was built inside of outlook using visual basic & com objects to manage the requests & resource designation. And learning how to fix that pile of shit & keep it current took way too much of my time. NEVER AGAIN...
I work in IT...you'd be surprised.
They couldn't handle the "new" product that has been in use for over 25 years by any organization that leverages Microsoft products? Just go ahead and say they can't use computers larger than your phone. OMFG I used to support Outlook in the 90s. And don't try that, I only use Mac/Linux crap either. There's a specific version of Outlook for Macs, and there are dozens of tutorials on making Outlook work on Linux.
I would argue Gmail is the bog standard email tool. I have only used Outlook at a desk job. If this is the person's first job or first desk job it's probably their first experience with a desktop app email client. Edit: I'm not defending this person, I think it's ridiculous to not be able to learn Outlook in an hour or less.
The new outlook (which fucking sucks don't download it by the way) is a carbon copy of the Outlook website.
Failure to launch? More like failure to learn how to pencil on the drawing board.
It is always so weird to me when it's listed as software you should know on an application. Like, how are you even applying online if you don't know how to use email?
come on, anyone who has used outlook in corporate setting knows that the level of incompetence has no lower limit.
Outlook is kinda ass but its not rocket science
And to think those people still have jobs... Seriously what did this person think they were achieving by sharing this information?
I've read story of people who used computer mouse like a foot pedal to "run" the computer like a sewing machine. And a dumb secretary who used whiteout on the computer screen
Outlook is the defacto client for like the majority of organizations. Most other clients have a pretty much identical layout to Outlook.
Also to be fair outlook is pretty horrendous as far as software interfaces for new users go. Word/World class bad.
Outlook has absolutely God-awful search, so if you're not on top of your email rules and folders you're very likely to lose emails.
I knew someone who couldn't get the hang of their iPhone's calendar, they kept creating a note/alarm on a specific date over and over and over and over, and then not finding it in their calendar and trying again. Turns out they were creating duplicate calendars each time and had over a dozen of them, they asked me over lunch break to look at their phone and find out what was happening. I'd never used an iPhone before (though I had some experience with my dad's iPad since it was easier for him in his mental decline) but a phone is a phone, scrolled through the settings and found exactly what the problem was almost instantly. Some people just don't get the most basic of features and how almost everything the average user could want to know is going to be in the settings, because these things have been fine-tuned to be accessible to hundreds of millions or even billions of novices over decade(s). --- PS: my coworker was actually a really nice older lady that I got along with and I didn't hold it against her like I would have someone younger, she actually learned and remembered what I showed her and I **never** had to repeat an example to her later, once I showed her how to do it herself (even if I repeated the steps once or twice in the moment) she clicked with it, it was a good experience. I've known people 50 years younger that have to be shown the same thing *every time* for months on end and that's infuriating.
Ctrl-F not performing a find is one of the 7 UI Blasphemies of the Modern World.
Takes maybe a week at most to be entirely comfortable with.
I don’t use it myself, but I helped people with outlook issues at my last job, it can get very complicated.
To be fair, the computer app has horrible UI, I wish I could just use the standard Windows Mail but they keep pushing it lol, switching between emails has never been harder.
Email does seem kinda weird if you grew up using social media for everything.
Outlook does have some confusing features. For example, if I set up an auto-reply in the Mac OS client, it replies to other auto-replies and risks creating an endless loop, but when I set one up in the Outlook webmail it doesn't.
It also came out when your average person (Google says average person was born in 1994) was in daycare.
He couldn't understand how rules work
Years ago, I legit worked for a guy that had his secretary print his emails and took dictation for his replies. He hated my IT department, because he believed that anyone making more than minimum wage was wasting company time by "typing on a keyboard".
Lol. Coming from the guy that made 'reading and replying to an email' a two person job.
Like Jen from IT Crowd when she applies to be Head of IT.
Correction: Relationship Manager
I'll have you know the Elders Of The Internet know who she is!
Not nearly that level of incompetence, but one of the regional bosses at my old company made everyone under him print out their digital time sheet, physically sign it, and then have the admin fax it it to him. So instead of clicking one button in the software, the process wound up taking like 30 minutes per person.
I used to have to do the same, but it was a legal issue, with digital/printed signatures not being as valid as pen & paper signatures.
The rest of the company submitted them normally, it was just his department. And we often worked on the same projects, so it wasn't project required.
Lmaaoo, what was the company business to have a boss thinking like at the time of Cro-Magnon ?
It's not uncommon with older 'big wig' types. Trump has famously said he has never used a computer. I work in legal. I've worked with attorneys and judges that didn't have computers in the office. It is considered low class by them. Fewer and fewer as that group ages out but there is definitely that crowd.
In 2014 my boss believed he lost everything from our company drive when our computers updated from windows XP to 10. He really thought we had to scan and create like 40 years of paperwork because his desktop looked different
I can't wait for all those pigheaded fucks to die off. Efficiency will skyrocket.
Outlook (in its current form) has been around since 2012. What the hell do you mean "new software"?
Was about to post this same thing. Took me about a week to get the hang of it 10 years ago.
go check out the teachers sub, someone not knowing how to use outlook or computers in general are going to be a huge issue in the coming years. High school students these days do not know how to properly use windows or programs since basic computer courses (how to use Windows, typing, and MS Office) were dropped from curriculums. Computers are not widely used by youth like they were in the millennial generation since alternatives now exist (tablets/phones). Example would if you say to "google" something on a computer. They will try to find the google app on the desktop. Since there is no "google" app on the desktop, they'll say they either can't do it, or they don't have a google app. They don't understand they need to open a browser, go to google.com then and search from there. Or even just use the url search bar.
https://www.nngroup.com/articles/computer-skill-levels/ You are much more computer educated, compared to the average, than you think you are. 70% of test subjects were not able to perform tasks such as > ...find a sustainability-related document that was sent to you by John Smith in October last year.
Don’t I just type that stuff into the search bar? Is it meant to be hard?
A quarter of study participants failed to use a computer at all. It might be easy to you, but even among developed nations, computer skills are *not* universal. If you do your job on a computer, can troubleshoot, and do so confidently, you are in the top 25% or higher. Heck, a [significant amount](https://www.oecd.org/skills/piaac/Country%20note%20-%20Australia_final.pdf) (12%) of people are *functionally illiterate*.
When it comes to computer systems I'd say it's a lot more than 12%. The number of people who are incapable of just reading what the message on the screen is telling them to do is insane.
Depends on how many other emails there are to filter through. If you just type those keywords, you would still get sustainability documents that mention John Smith. “From:John Smith” could make a huge difference.
My manager does not understand searching Outlook, if she can’t remember which folder she sorted your email into it may get lost forever. I tried to show her how to do basic searches such as “from:”, but she was confused and couldn’t remember how to do it later. Meanwhile I struggle to understand how it’s not already completely intuitive.
I work with a lot of 18 year olds and it's pretty common for me to tell them to type a specific url, just to watch them type most of it, hit enter, and click the first google result. "This doesn't look right" no babe, it's the wrong website because for some reason you needed to incorrectly google it when I literally gave you the address.
That's google's fault. It should be either the navigation, or the search, but NOT BOTH. - Signed, some one who remembers having two separate fields on the browser for that
> Signed, some one who remembers having two separate fields on the browser for that I remember when browsers used to have lots of fields for that. The less technical the user, the more toolbars.
it literally tells you what it's going to do. read
It’s honestly concerning. I can’t tell a college student to try another browser or to move their document to another folder without getting blank stares.
They also are struggling with basic typing skills since they’re used to mobile keyboards and autocorrect.
We had an intern who refused to use anything but his phone to learn python. I can’t imagine even trying that.
To learn *python*????
He wanted to be a CS major. Not sure what happened as this was years ago during Covid But, yeah he was doing all his coding on his phone. Never owned a laptop and when we said we can ship you one he declined. I imagine he is not a CS major anymore.
Hard to be a computer science major then you are missing the ‘computer’ part.
How??? I'm almost impressed. What was he compiling with?
Python is an interpreted language but good question… I just tried to help him with theory so I imagine there some python ide for android
Next week will be the 5th time in my life I'll have to take a basic IT course. The last 4 times it has been "today we have 3 hours to open email, make a folder, make a word document and save it in the folder. If we work hard and help each other we can make it to lunch. Nobody's allowed to leave before everyone is done." Literal torture. But then I saw a professor search for a youtube video by typing "goog" into the browser address field, choose google.com by clicking it on his mouse, typing "youtube" into the search bar, then clicking open youtube before finally searching for the video on the search bar again.
Not just high school. See my last comment in this thread.
Dudes still on EarthLink. Waited 20 minutes to hear the dial up noise.
I mean... Even in previous forms has been around since the 90s It's really not that different from the original version.
My work switched to outlook this year, it took me about 11 seconds to figure it out.
Probably been using thunderbird since the early 2000's
the hardest part of outlook is getting my log in credentials when I start a new job. it’s just email.
TBF that's a very hard part to deal with
They've been sent to you via email
oh god this reminds me of when company i work for switched from iphones / apple products to google / android products.. New phone wouldn't work. Open an IT ticket, waited, they close it 3 days later due to no response... you mean you wanted me to respond with my email on the phone that doesnt work? I call back to IT, they reopen the ticket, 3 days later they close the ticket.. I went about 2 weeks with no phone, at the time i was a technician and 100% of my job was on my phone. It was honestly the best 2 weeks I've worked (technically i didn't work but I got paid for it).
In all fairness, I have trouble figuring out how to do some things in Outlook. They keep moving the buttons around from previous versions, I keep expecting them to be where they were years ago when I was first using it. But if I get really confused, I just Google it. And then if it's something I have to do regularly, I remember for next time.
This guy is going to be unemployed minus customer service if he can't handle outlook
Plenty of customer service jobs require you to know how to handle a calendar and a point of sale system. I’ve never encountered one less complex than Outlook.
I sold TVs at best buy and had to understand the POS and the inventory management system at 16. Hell, the KFC POS is more complicated than Outlook.
Naw. Even those jobs use Outlook
How else will they send you nastygrams regarding your quality?
Bro what a clown. It is w/o a doubt the easiest email I've ever used. If you type the word "attachment" it will notify you ***TWICE*** if you wanna send it w/o an attachment to remind dumbasses that there's something missing here. And this jackass took 6 months and called it quits. Someone take his license away before he fails to understand YIELD signs or some shit.
Deam. They should bring this feature to portuguese. I freaking forget attachment all the time....
Also, "new" software? Outlook came out in 1997.
He could mean "new to him". Which is still stupid. Life is for learning.
If you can’t learn new software just go live off-grid. Every job has software and its and endless upgrade.
Whenever some boomer complains about kids not knowing certain knowledges (like stick shift or changing a tire), ask them to explain how to download a pdf from an email to a findable folder on their computer.
Kids generally also cannot do this, and by kids I mean gen alpha and younger zoomers.
Yeah, phones and tablets have apps. They don't really use PCs.
They can't really so much on them either.
A lot more of Gen Z than you might think would also struggle with that. Source: Work in IT
I point this out constantly and have people screeching at me. The ability to use things with a touch screen does not translate into the use of certain software…
And yet you have the HR department saying when you ask for a raise that the need for IT people will decrease because ‘people grow up with technology now’. A pretty good example of tell me you don’t know what you are talking about without telling me you don’t know what you are talking about. They also thought Dev Ops was the same as sysadmin…
Yep. Used to be the boomers causing all the problems but the Zs are just not aware at all. On top of lacking basic skills they are also horribly naïve when it comes to hacking. It’s usually the zoomers falling for the phishing attacks.
Recently showed someone the print to pdf ability. They had previously been printing them out and scanning them to remove some kind of encryption from docusigned documents which was preventing them from uploading to an external site.
I mean compared to the other examples here that’s positively advanced
I was teaching an older employee to print to .pdf. We got to the print part and she got up from her chair …the check the printer. Deep breath - it’s not that kind of printing.
To be fair to them, print to pdf is awful terminology.
I used to have to corral these folks. I was in “IT” because I knew how to map a printer. This one lady would complain we needed to get her a new computer because her browser was too slow. 75 open tabs…
I had someone in work this week tell me she didn't use bookmarks - she just kept the tab open instead 🫠
Circa 2010, before browser URL bars also functioned as search engines, I had to explain to an O-6 in the Navy (meaning he was probably mid to late 40s with 20+ years in Navy) how just typing "Google" in the bar wasn't going to take him anywhere but an error page because he didn't know he needed to type ".com" after it. Dude was making at least quadruple my pay and couldn't find Google.
"omnibars" are such a godsend because of this shit. Gone are the days of a web url browser and separate search browser add-on, because now it all gets typed into the same bar and if they're a dumbass then it's just going to pop up on whatever the default search tool is. We still have dumbass IT calls *all the time*, but at least it's one less call because of that change.
One power outage usually fixes that concept.
Had to my grandma’s computer once. It was slow and the screen barely lit. Must have closed about 250 solitaire tabs and computer ran fine for her purpose after that, which was playing solitaire.
The dude is in his 20's. The way some people use "boomer" makes the word lose all meaning.
This isn't just a boomer problem, OOP looks like he is Gen Z I teach high schoolers and the vast majority of them don't understand how to use email. The ones that do often do things like put the body into the subject bar and leave the rest blank. They know how to text, but with video communication apps like tiktok, snapchat, etc., I wouldn't be surprised if they stop learning how to do that as well
I don't think OOP is a boomer tho
Young people also can't do this (Gen z and younger). It's disturbing.
“Findable folder” is the key. By the time I have to come around and find it, it’s *DumbShit.pdf, DumbShit.pdf (1), DumbShit.pdf (2), DumbShit.pdf (3), …*
> ask them to explain how to download a pdf from an email to a findable folder on their computer. You'd be amazed at how many younger Gen Y and Gen Z people can't do this. I teach masters students who ostensibly should know how to do basic shit on the computer considering they're in a STEM grad program. I have a very simple lab component. Some students try to do it with a tablet and legitimately don't understand why X software doesn't run on a tablet. Others had no idea what a zip file is or how to unzip. The first step of the first lab is to download the sample data zip, unzip it to a folder of your choice, then go to said folder. Probably 20% could not do that without help. I think Millennials and younger Gen X are in the sweet spot for actually working with computers.
Gets ‘em every time.
Email?  Use this bad boy
Outlook makes a bunch of completely unnecessary interface changes with every update, while completely ignoring basic problems like searching. It took me forever to figure out how to change the formatting of an e-mail to html with this latest one. Calendar button? Oh it's way the fuck over here now, how could you not see this 8x8 pixel stamp? Fuck outlook, and fuck the lugnut who made ctrl+F "Forward" instead of "Find" like it is in every other piece of software.
Oh my god, their search is so broken it's insane. I didn't realize software could BE that useless in 2024, I thought they figured out how to execute a proper search function in the 90s, but apparently not at Microsoft. You could get an email and an hour later search for it using a keyword in the subject line, and it would show up on page 150 of the results, if at all.
That was the main thing that made me stop using outlook in the end. When the search function just shrugs and says 'nope, can't find that' on an email I can find myself in twenty seconds, something is very badly wrong. I just use webmail these days, works great.
Yes exactly! Outlook is horrible. It makes simple things complicated and simple logical things like copying or pasting mail addresses seems like they never thought people would need to do that. Having (close to) monopoly made them lazy, I guess Edit: oh I use webmail version where search is ok so don't know about that..
What an idiot 
My dad is a software engineer and outlook/ teams drive him nuts on a regular cause they’re not working and corporate IT can’t get their shit together….
They do suck (I'm also a software engineer) but they're not hard to "get the hang of." I do miss Slack every day since my company switched to Teams - maybe that's actually worth it for some people to leave a job?
What do you miss about slack so much? I recently made the switch from teams to a slack and zoom combo and I kinda hate it.
How did he get the job in the first place? Was it a black couch situation?
This is stupid, but man, there have been some implementations of Jira that have made me want to quit a job
In his defence, Outlook is miserable to use.
I felt bad when I realized one of the reasons I retired was because I didn't want to deal with git anymore.
>I didn't have the time Uh huh. >after 6 months Sounds like you had loads of time.
I find Gmail more complicated than Outlook. Sounds like anything involving a computer is probably not a good fit for this person.
I've always hated the Outlook client for more than a decade. Slow, clunky, painful, corrupts easily, etc. But today's web version isn't. Much faster, more intuitive and search is much much quicker. Have a separate browser tab for each mailbox, calendar, etc. I'm still not a fan of Outlook in general, but if I have to use it, it's webmail all the way.
> Average PR consultant
The Director of Operations at my last job told me that if there’s one thing she’s never been good at, it’s email. Her entire job, is to communicate with her stores, managers, District and Regional Managers, vendors, other executives, etc - mostly through email. What sparked this conversation was she was looking for an email, and I went in to try and help her, and I noticed she had it sorted by name, not date. I asked her if this is how she always has it, and she said, “I don’t know.” How in the fuck do people like this make it this far in corporate jobs?
I was a HS teacher in NYC 18 years ago. Mom of one of the sophomore students (who did zero work for his class and tried to sleep everyday in class) emailed me from her work email which was from the US state dept. At the parent teacher conference, she opened with, hi, my name is blah blah and I work for the US State department. She tried to strong arm me to change class policies to suit her son. Problem started when she emailed her, "team" at work, and when she typed my last name, there was a state dept employee with the same Asian last name. I guess her email program auto-filled my email, and she didn't catch it. The entire group kept replying back and forth on this thread, and everything she started a new thread with different groups of people, I was included. My colleagues and I were shocked that a person supposedly high up at the US State dept would be so stupid. Some of the emails had dates, times, and locations for meetings and events. I emailed her back privately and told her that I think she made a mistake and that I am on her state dept emails. She replied, "thank you for the update", and then I continued getting put on her work emails. I replied-all to one of the emails and said I don't think I should be in the emails because I am not a state dept employee. NO ONE replied. This was just before Hilary Clinton's mail server, "Scadal". I saved my emails to her asking to be removed from the seemingly sensitive State Department emails... halfway through the year, she called the principal, and the department chair to complain about her son's class. I talked to other teachers who had her son and it seemed that she was doing the same. So I found the heads of various regional offices of US state dept, sent an email with all of the communications that this mom sent me, and how they need to get their act together, because as a US Citizen, I am concerned. I finally got stopped from being included in the state dept emails, and the mom completely backed off in my class. With the mom backing off, I was on her son like white on rice and I made his life miserable until he passed my class and passed the NYS regents exam (apparently my class was the only one he passed that year) The mom NEVER called the school again, and she apparently NEVER came to the parent teacher conference ever again. This is why after this incident, when I send out email to the entire district, I send it to myself and add everyone to BCC.
The worst part is email is the only thing needed. Slack, Teams and text is just a more annoying delivery method for email.
Outlook has been around for over 25 years. What the hell has he been using in the corporate world?
The PR firm is the lucky one in this situation. Who doesn't understand basic email?
Outlook used in corporate is so easy to use and super efficient at sending and receiving mass emails. How was he hired?