Ever want to make a little mischief back at the workplace?

[Pellice]

I am still on the payroll for a bit longer, and am still getting almost all the various listserv emails. Today, a routine "form submission" email was sent out by somebody and erroneously copied to the whole [Financial System X] listserv.

We are now up to 50 emails and counting (another one just came in), all saying variations of
"I do not know why I am receiving this."

This includes several emails stating that it's an error, including one from the listerv maintainer stating that it is an error. Yet still the emails keep coming, from people who are credentialed as Very Smart. It's kind of funny.

But that is NOT why I am posting here. It's that I LONG to make a little mischief, especially for this universally hated and derided [Financial System X] by posting something along the lines of:

"Dear folks: Notwithstanding whether you HAVE or HAVE NOT figured out that the "reply-to" field accidentally includes the whole listserv, NOW IS YOUR CHANCE! We can clearly see the vaunted Communications Desk for [Financial System X] does NOT have control of the listserv. NOW is your chance to tell the whole listserv your view of the [many] problems and what should be done about [Financial System X]. Take it. I want to hear your thoughts!

Of course, sigh, I wouldn't do it, being too timid. But do any of you ever have the urge to mess with MegaCorp's minds or emotions - just to make a little mischief?

 

[ransil]

Reply back " unsubscribe "

Someone at my mega corp sent out a company wide message by mistake maybe 100k people, i had to creste a filter to trap all the replys, it took about 4 hours to subside.

 

[SumDay]

I'm drafting a post-retirement manifesto to our CEO. Will I actually send it? To be determined...

 

[Aerides]

Any reply to the Reply Allpocalypse just makes you look like another one of the twits. Even attempts at humor.

 

[Dash man]

I did create a little mischief. I sent an email to my manager, copying his director and VP, about the unfairness of their recognition/award system. It was sent a month before I gave my notice, so I didn’t care. I highlighted a number of things my team had done and compared the to the highlighted accomplishments of the monthly “winners.” The difference I pointed out was the “winners” were all located at the same location as the manager, our director or our VP. My team were all telecommuters. I received phone calls from each of the recipients and a senior VP investigating my concerns. Nothing changed despite their promises of fairness in the future. I had stayed in touch with several people to know that. At least I got to air my grievance.

 

[SecondCor521]

If your goal is to create positive change in the organization, I wouldn't bother.

If it's for your own private amusement and you'd be amused regardless of the reaction from [-]poking the bear[/-] the organization and you're 1000% sure that there would be zero repercussions on you (which I never thought possible for me), then go ahead.

ETA: I agree with W2R's comment below - I would never poke fun at any individual, only at an organization. This is a difficult thing to do perfectly, and there's always a chance someone will take it personally.

 

[W2R]

Of course, sigh, I wouldn't do it, being too timid. But do any of you ever have the urge to mess with MegaCorp's minds or emotions - just to make a little mischief?

Never. I might grin at someone else's joke/mischief, but I guess that messing with people at work just isn't my style.

Part of it is that I never know what people might be going through in their day to day lives, either related to work, or unrelated to work. I'd feel pretty bad if the person who made that mistake was dealing with some sort of horrendous personal burden that distracted him or her, caused him or her to mistakenly hit "all".

 

[MRG]

I've seen it happen many times. A couple of times it was the legal team hitting reply to all with an attachment that was porn. They collectively thought it was a bad idea to forward porn around.

Not sure if it's true but I read a fellow's TIFU confession where he claimed to suggest Twin Peaks as the site for their next all employees off site meeting. Apparently nobody knew Twin Peaks is a restuarant with similar dress attire to Hooters.

 

[GalaxyBoy]

I used to get a similar urge but in the end I always had enough sense not to give in to it. OTOH, once or twice I came up with a detailed response similar to yours and it felt good to type it. Then it felt equally good to take the high road and delete it, having gotten the urge out of my system.

 

[joeea]

It's that I LONG to make a little mischief, especially for this universally hated and derided [Financial System X] by posting something along the lines of:

"Dear folks: Notwithstanding whether you HAVE or HAVE NOT figured out that the "reply-to" field accidentally includes the whole listserv, NOW IS YOUR CHANCE! We can clearly see the vaunted Communications Desk for [Financial System X] does NOT have control of the listserv. NOW is your chance to tell the whole listserv your view of the [many] problems and what should be done about [Financial System X]. Take it. I want to hear your thoughts!

Of course, sigh, I wouldn't do it, being too timid. But do any of you ever have the urge to mess with MegaCorp's minds or emotions - just to make a little mischief?

I never have that urge any longer.

When contemplating mischief, think to yourself "what if everyone did this?" Then let it pass.

If that doesn't suffice, write the email, then delete it before sending. Just be careful that you don't accidentally hit "Send".

 

[JoeWras]

No urge to cause this. I'm not a prankster. Our IT guys are actually clever now and make quick rules on the exchange server to dump them.

But back in the day... Oh it was fun. My Megacorp is supposedly a premier tech company. To see the clueless employees respond, well, it was something else. People would start sniping back saying they should be the first on the layoff list.

That didn't work, made it worse.

So then people would say, "The 'unsubscribe' is broken. To really unsubscribe, you have to type 'Jehoshaphat Unsubscribe'." People actually responded with that!!! But maybe they were in on the joke and were fanning the flames. Unknown.

 

[Pellice]

I used to get a similar urge but in the end I always had enough sense not to give in to it. OTOH, once or twice I came up with a detailed response similar to yours and it felt good to type it. Then it felt equally good to take the high road and delete it, having gotten the urge out of my system.

Yes, exactly what I did I am sure the urge will diminish steadily. I'd rather look ahead!

 

[Texas Proud]

The reason you keep getting back emails from people is that most probably read them in the order they get them....


So, get a crap email that should not come to you... reply back and then later on run across the emails saying never mind...


And I never thought of creating any kind of mischief.... I was pretty open when things were happening that I disagreed with and it cost me at times over my career, but never wanted to harm anybody...

 

[Bestwifeever]

Hit send all? I could totally have done something like this when I worked, so I would just feel sorry for the person who did it and had to endure the fallout. There are probably more interesting and enjoyable ways to create a little mischief.

 

[foxfirev5]

No need at all. You're retired. Declare victory and move on with your life. All the best!

 

[Taxman59]

We had a listserv that several sr. staff were members of. Every so often, a mistake would go out to all. Our inboxes would fill up with "Huh?" then "don't reply all" then "remove me", finally "Me Too". since there were about 250 members, all who responded within a few minutes of the first mistake, there were usually about 1,000 junk emails. About 4 hours later, the weekly summary of what happened would come out, and the "I thought I was removed from this list" and "me too!" would start over again!

 

[brewer12345]

My favorite had nothing to do with computers. I was told of the guppy in the radiator trick. Before you leave, you dropped a guppy in the radiator. Every time the heat came up in the winter, there would be a distinct aroma to remember you by. Usually it would take a looonnnggg time for them to figure out where it came from and do something about it.

 

[JakeinChina]

Where I work now, we had a senior quality manager guy, who was about 65 yrs old at the time and had been with the company for about 15 years. He was let go a week after I joined (about 7 years ago) by my boss who ran Operations. We moved all the QC inspections to China when we set up a couple of sourcing/buying offices.


So after this older guy got fired, almost every night for at least 2 or 3 months, he'd get a couple cocktails in him, and would start sending off emails. And I mean nasty emails, mostly about or directly to my boss who let him go. He would send emails to probably around a dozen current employees, as well as the owner and CEO of the company.


It was pretty sad. The guy was well liked and had a pretty good reputation with his colleagues. All that went down the drain because he couldn't handle the fact that his skill set wasn't needed anymore. It became an ongoing joke among the executives when we got together "Oh Jack must be having a couple highballs tonight" once his emails started rolling in. It was unfortunate.

 

[marko]

Had a buddy who was arrested on a real chicken s**t charge (stopped in his own driveway for DUI), lost his job and license and spent two years just travelling. Officer could've let it go but it was a slow night...heard even the chief wasn't happy with the pinch.

He sent regular postcards to his arresting officer.

Things like:
Hi! Heard there's a foot of snow...nice and warm down here in Mexico!! Here for another 3 weeks!!!
Then a month later:
Great skiing here in the French Alps; thinking of you!
Then later:
Travelling to see Mt Rushmore over the next week...great weather. Say hi to all the folks for me. On to St Tropez in two weeks!

He went on and embellished it (quite credibly) with claims of hanging out with Paris Hilton types in Miami and being invited on some rocker's jet, one celebrity connection leading to another adding "couldn't have done all this without your help!"
...and so on. About 20 postcards over a few years.

Lemons to lemonade:
Actually, in his travels he ended up meeting some very wealthy Italian woman who nobody's ever heard of and is now living in the south of France somewhere.

 

[gretah]

Whenever I got the urge to do something mean, I just clamped down and did nothing. Most of the people who made me very angry soon screwed themselves in ways much worse than anything I thought of.

I wanted to slash one boss's car tires but didn't. A couple years later I heard his wife finally stopped putting up with his cheating and left him, taking their kids.

Another jerk boss and part owner of the company got caught embezzling. His partner dissolved the firm and all the good paying clients went with the good guy.

 

[brett]

No, of course not. Why burn bridges for no reason whatsoever?

This seems like such a pointless exercise to me.

 

[skipro33]

I was laid off a job once after training 2 young guys out of college who replaced me under a 'reorganization'. Their combined pay was less than I made, so they kicked me to the curb. This is in the heyday of pagers, before cell phone texting was so common. After I was canned, I would send pages to those bosses who made decisions like they did of me of phone #'s for sex calls. The type that a sultry voice would talk to them and ask for a credit card or permission to bill to the phone # they called on. After a while, they figured out not to call these #'s, recognizing that they were suspicious. So I then paged them with upper management #'s. Those they HAD to call as they never could tell if the page was legit or not. It was irritating for them I'm sure.

After the advent of texting, I limit my 'fun' to those times I stop in at the company. A feature of the phone system is the ability to forward an extension to any place, both on premises and off premises. Mostly this is done with a preprogrammed button on the company phone. However, all the button does is play back a series of phone button #'s, sorta like speed dialing. To forward a number, just pick up any phone, press *#55, the extension you want to forward, wait for the double beep, then the phone # you want to forward to. To cancel, use *#56. I'll forward the bosses phone to one of those sex #'s I mentioned, or to his home, another department head that he was having issues with, etc. Anyone calling the boss got a sexy voice, his wife or home answering machine or the wrong boss. Since I don't do it that often, every year or so when I stop in for customer business, I don't think they ever caught on to what was happening. They would just report the problem and someone would 'fix' it for them. Now days, the bosses are all gone, so no more chain yanking.

 

[kcowan]

About 20 postcards over a few years.

Lemons to lemonade:
Actually, in his travels he ended up meeting some very wealthy Italian woman who nobody's ever heard of and is now living in the south of France somewhere.

I hope he sent a Thank You card!

 

[MRG]

I suppose I did my mischief while employed. One, two line code change brought multiple systems down for months.

 

[CoolRich59]

Of course, sigh, I wouldn't do it, being too timid. But do any of you ever have the urge to mess with MegaCorp's minds or emotions - just to make a little mischief?

About a year before I left megacorp, someone in their infinite wisdom decreed that housekeeping staff would no longer empty individual trash containers. Instead, the company was going to place large plastic trash cans in the copy rooms and each person would be responsible for emptying their own trash.

I took a copy of the "new corporate travel policy" joke that had circulated for years (see below), modified it to add a line about the new requirement to empty your own trash, and sent it to a couple of colleagues.

I soon learned that it had been forwarded far and wide when I started getting comments from people all across the megacorp universe. The CEO even mentioned it when he announced he was revoking the self-service trash policy.


New Corporate Travel Policy

Due to the current financial situation, changes will be made to the Corporate Travel Policy. Effective Monday the following revised procedures apply:

Lodging
All employees are encouraged to stay with relatives and friends while on business travel. If weather permits, public areas such as parks should be used as temporary lodging sites. Bus terminals, train stations, and office lobbies may provide shelter in periods of inclement weather.

Transportation
Hitchhiking is the preferred mode of travel in lieu of commercial transport.
Luminescent safety vests will be issued to all employees prior to their departure on business trips. Bus transportation will be used only when work schedules require such travel. Airline tickets will be authorized in extreme circumstances and the lowest fares will be used. For example, if a meeting is scheduled in Seattle, but the lower fare can be obtained by traveling to Detroit, then travel to Detroit will be substituted for travel to Seattle.

Meals
Expenditures for meals will be limited to an absolute minimum. It should be noted that certain grocery and specialty chains, such as Hickory Farms, General Nutrition centers, Costco, Sams Club stores etc. often provide free samples of promotional items. Entire meals can be obtained in this manner. Travelers should also be familiar with indigenous roots, berries, and other protein sources available at their destinations. If restaurants must be utilized, travelers should use "all you can eat" salad bars. This is especially effective for employees traveling together as one plate can be used to feed the entire group. Employees are also encouraged to bring their own food on business travel. Cans of tuna fish, Spam, and Beefaroni can be consumed at your leisure without the necessary bother of heating or costly preparation.

Miscellaneous
All employees are encouraged to devise innovative techniques in effort to save company dollars. One enterprising individual has already suggested that money could be raised during airport layover periods which could be used to defray travel expenses. In support of this idea, red caps will be issued to all employees prior to their departure so that they may earn tips by helping others with their luggage. Small plastic roses and ball point pens will also be available to employees so that sales may be made as time permits.