The Email (Part 1)
- Part 2 is here.
- Part 3 is here.
A few weeks ago, I went out to SF to complete a project. In the midst of $6 gas, $8 cups of coffee and awesome Dim Sum, I also got caught in one of the more bizarre scandals in my life..
I was in Palo Alto to complete a project for an old client. The project involved upgrading a bunch of things (Oracle 12->19, Centos Linux->Rocky Linux, Oracle Java->OpenJDK) in a running application and making sure things didn't break in the middle.
I had to talk to the tech team (IT guys) and functional team (testers) at all times to make sure everyone involved was "on the same page".
To ensure I didn't miss anyone. Every email I sent out was to EVERYONE. Since I was doing technical work, I put all people on the tech team in the TO: Line, and put all people on the functional team, who will be testing things after I am done on the CC: Line.
A typical email looked like the following:
-----
TO: John, Joe, James, Jason, Eddie, Chris ... (+ 10 more people)
CC: Grace, Jamie, Tammy, Sue, Christy ... (+11 more people)
Subject: Blah Blah..
Hello everyone,
BLAH BLAH BLAH ..
Best regards,
John
------
Looks ok, correct? Yeah I thought so too ...
Then a few days later I get a call from Armon at the HR department. As a general rule, when you get a call from HR, it's not good.
So I show up at his office.
"Hello John." said Armon.
"Hey man, what's going on. Is everything ok?" I asked.
"Well, we got a call from a person who said they were not happy with your emails." said Armon.
"What?" I shouted. "May I ask what I did that was so offensive?"
"Well" replied Armon. "It seems this person was not happy in the way you sent out the email."
"May I ask you to be a bit more specific...?"
"Well you see, you added all the women on the CC: line of the email, whereas all the men are on the main TO: line. The someone in the former group feels that is discriminating."
"Are you NUTS???" I shouted back.
"Well," replied Armon. "this person feels the CC: line is inferior to the TO:line in an email..."
 |  |