My Co-Workers are Stupid: Part 1

[Lord Blackadder]

Lately our Lab email system has been getting an unusually large amount of spam, and today I found a message in my inbox titled "RE:Heaping helping of SPAM" in which a co-worker wrote "Is anyone else getting ten times the usual spam lately?"....and they used the group code, which means the message was sent to all 20,000+ employees in the Cleveland Clinic Health system.

Worse yet, about 20 peple replied to the message with one-liners like "yep, me too. Lots of spam", again using the group code.

Now our email system has fragged itself and won't even open due to the traffic.

 

[Danksi]

Lately our Lab email system has been getting an unusually large amount of spam, and today I found a message in my inbox titled "RE:Heaping helping of SPAM" in which a co-worker wrote "Is anyone else getting ten times the usual spam lately?"....and they used the group code, which means the message was sent to all 20,000+ employees in the Cleveland Clinic Health system.

Worse yet, about 20 peple replied to the message with one-liners like "yep, me too. Lots of spam", again using the group code.

Now our email system has fragged itself and won't even open due to the traffic.

Bit like when a family/friend who doesn't know any better, forwards an email (from Microsoft or something) telling them to forward it to everyone they know, otherwise they'll loose their hotmail or MSN account.. you then feel compelled to reply-all asking everyone on the CC-list NOT to forward the email any further... it's a vicious circle.

 

[ibook30]

Worse yet, about 20 peple replied to the message with one-liners like "yep, me too. Lots of spam", again using the group code.

Now our email system has fragged itself and won't even open due to the traffic.

Same thing happened at my place of work about 2 years ago. Butthe "Reply All" users were aware of what they were doing - giggling about it- and all of them were requesting to be "taken off the list". As a result - email went down and we all lost time and money. Stupid.

 

[emw]

A few years ago someone mistakenly sent out a large file (it was a legitimate business reason, at least) to the all company list, apparently thinking they'd chosen their all department list.

It was something like a 10MB file. To over 30,000 people. Imagine the fun IT had with that, especially as people started to reply all that they received it in error.

 

[nbs2]

There is only one problem with this thread....Part I is long since gone....so depressing that people can continually be so stupid....

 

[Lord Blackadder]

It's My Co-Workers are Stupid Part 1....If we were talking about stupid people in general I'd have to use scientific notation.

Our IT sent out a message telling people (for the millionth time) what the group code is and not to use it except in certain circumstances. As if that will help...

It's especially funny when somebody replies to an email with private, off-color or otherwise sketcy content and accidentally hits the group code. Doh! We've had a few incidents with that, some of which resulted in people being fired.

 

[nbs2]

It's especially funny when somebody replies to an email with private, off-color or otherwise sketcy content and accidentally hits the group code. Doh! We've had a few incidents with that, some of which resulted in people being fired.

At least it weeds out the stupid (although if you are normally careful and have that one screwup...that could stink). I wish people could be booted out of law school or professors fired for that....

I thought everybody at the Cleveland Clinic were geniuses - if I ever have a heart problem, that's where I want to be.

 

[Lord Blackadder]

I thought everybody at the Cleveland Clinic were geniuses - if I ever have a heart problem, that's where I want to be.

Well, I work in research. Which means that everybody is very bright with regards to their work but usually inept when it comes to human interaction. Many of them use very technical computer programs on a daily basis but are so inept with computer hardware they'd probably suffer severe rectal damage if they tried to install some RAM without IT's help.

On the medical side, the Cleveland Clinic is absolutely top-notch. Many of the doctors I've met are primadonna ******s but they're world-class at what they do, so whatever.

My grandfather had a massive heart attack on the way to an appointment here once - when they brought him into the hospital he was clinically dead. Not only did they revive him, they also operated sucessfully on the problem area and now he's as fit as a 90-year old can be after that.

 

[MattG]

Yeah, we have idiots here where I work who will use the "Reply to All" button. That's why whenever I send out a mass email, I always use the BCC field. That way there's no risk

 

[fitinferno]

Yeah, we have idiots here where I work who will use the "Reply to All" button. That's why whenever I send out a mass email, I always use the BCC field. That way there's no risk

By replying to this message as "same here" I almost feel bad considering the topic...lol.

At my work, we had a funny incidence of a few people using the entire department list to discuss a really basic keycard problem. Made for a good laugh.

 

[Oryan]

This afternoon a guy in my fraternity forwarded one of those "Bill Gates is giving away his fortune" emails to our list-serve. He said it would probably be a good way to raise money for the house. One of our alumni responded with a link to snopes.com and told him he'd better learn to use it before he gets a real job.

 

[Les Kern]

This afternoon a guy in my fraternity forwarded one of those "Bill Gates is giving away his fortune" emails to our list-serve. He said it would probably be a good way to raise money for the house. One of our alumni responded with a link to snopes.com and told him he'd better learn to use it before he gets a real job.

I had an ADMINISTRATOR with a DOCTORATE send that to ALL. He said he had to take chance because he needed some money. (!)
Below are the stats from the last 4 days from my mail server (secret domain!)... note how many spams we get. That's NOTHING... I have the filters set pretty low becasue we were having too many legit mails get "silently discarded".
Some folks are just plain dumb... others are smart but waste their lives DOING spam.

 

[CompUser]

You should hear the stories my dad tells about some of the people at his work, especially the tech support people.

For example:

The CEO/President of the company calls tech support because he is having troubles with his computer. He starts talking with a support person and then the tech support person tells him "I have to go, it's 5:00".

My dad wanted to have Lotus IM software. First the tech support people told him it would cost too much money. My dad did some research and found out that the IM client was built into the existing software they have. He told the tech support people that and they said "Yea, well then people might be instant messaging people and won't be doing their work". My dad got to do it.

One night my dad was trying to get his e-mail from home. It wasn't working so he called tech support and no one answered the phone. He later found out that the power went out so all the servers shut down and apparently there is no system to notify anyone that the servers are down. He asked the tech support people why they don't have it and they said "because it doesn't exist", which is not true because my dad's old company had that system, he even remembers having it set up.

The CEO/President also was talking to my dad about how it would be really cool if they could log in and get to all of there files from home or if they were away on a trip. My dad says, well my old business had that, so we should get it here. The tech people said "it would be too much work to setup"

All of the computers at his work have windows 2000, even though they buy new computers with XP. Apparently the tech people are too scared to try out the OS that has been out for 4 years or w/e. He made them put it on his computer so that he could use his port replicator without having to turn off his computer. Instead of installing winXP, they just bought him a new computer.

There entire network is messed up right now. Very important CAD documents have vanished from places and have reappeared in other places in the newtwork. The back up tape drives are messed up as well. This guy that works for my dad felt really guilty because he thought he lost an enormous project. But then everyones files started disappearing.

He has been able to get them to do all of the things he wants done to modernize the company a little, or at least make it run smoother. He has quite a bit of power within the company, and the CEO likes him and listens to him, so thats good. There are other employees working there that they do not like and want to get rid of but are not because sometimes they are really good at what they do, and other times he wonders how they even have a job.

 

[OutThere]

They're not technically my coworkers, but whatever....


The IT department at my school is utterly inept. It's a boarding school, so everyone depends on a) The Groupwise school-wide email system 2)Internet in the dorms.

Of course IT can't get either right.

2 years when the Blaster worm was around, we came back from summer vacation, and tons of computers were infected, so naturally the internet went down for 2 months while IT sat in their boardroom trying to figure out what to do. Finally they decided the best solution was to go room to room and apply patches to each students computer.

A few months after that, the internet was working smoothly, until the internet winked out again. AT&T had noticed virus activity on the T1 lines, and was threatening to deactivate them unless the school solved the problem. Naturally, solving the problem meant turning the internet off for a week.

This year they installed all new router/switching hardware in the all of the dorms and throughout the main buildings. Good plan, right? Wrong. Part of the installation was a new hardware firewall/packetshaper unit, which was misconfigured so that it was logging inane amounts of activity, overloading itself with logs, and then crashing, taking down the entire schoolwide network (serving ~1000 people) at random times each day for a few weeks until they reconfigured it.

Of course if it happened after 5:00 at night, nobody would fix it until the next morning.

Sooooo, not technically my coworkers, but come on people, they get paid exorbitant salaries to do nothing 95% of the time.

 

[fitinferno]

They're not technically my coworkers, but whatever....


2 years when the Blaster worm was around, we came back from summer vacation, and tons of computers were infected, so naturally the internet went down for 2 months while IT sat in their boardroom trying to figure out what to do. Finally they decided the best solution was to go room to room and apply patches to each students computer.

In defence of your school's IT department somewhat, this is one of the biggest annoyances amongst my school's IT department. When new students arrive, in order to prevent viruses, we will throw leaflets, emails, school computer popups and the works all in an effort to get students to realise that they need to put proper virus/spyware protection on their computers...which we hand out for free whenever they need (seriously, sometimes I wind up working at 3am). If they need us to install it for them, sure thing. And yet I spend most of my work hours trying to uninfect student computers after they become so infected they're unusable. When they realise...oh, maybe I should've listened to all the info about virus protection...but I just didn't have the time!

So I guess my point is that stupid students and stupid IT service coworkers don't make the best mix...lol.

 

[rdowns]

It's My Co-Workers are Stupid Part 1....If we were talking about stupid people in general I'd have to use scientific notation.

Our IT sent out a message telling people (for the millionth time) what the group code is and not to use it except in certain circumstances. As if that will help...

In my company, only a handful of people have permissions to send an email to everyone. While we're only about 175 employees, I shudder to think of the things that would be sent to all if some were able to.

 

[Les Kern]

You should hear the stories my dad tells about some of the people at his work, especially the tech support people.

For example:

The CEO/President of the company calls tech support because he is having troubles with his computer. He starts talking with a support person and then the tech support person tells him "I have to go, it's 5:00".

My dad wanted to have Lotus IM software. First the tech support people told him it would cost too much money. My dad did some research and found out that the IM client was built into the existing software they have. He told the tech support people that and they said "Yea, well then people might be instant messaging people and won't be doing their work". My dad got to do it.

One night my dad was trying to get his e-mail from home. It wasn't working so he called tech support and no one answered the phone. He later found out that the power went out so all the servers shut down and apparently there is no system to notify anyone that the servers are down. He asked the tech support people why they don't have it and they said "because it doesn't exist", which is not true because my dad's old company had that system, he even remembers having it set up.

The CEO/President also was talking to my dad about how it would be really cool if they could log in and get to all of there files from home or if they were away on a trip. My dad says, well my old business had that, so we should get it here. The tech people said "it would be too much work to setup"

All of the computers at his work have windows 2000, even though they buy new computers with XP. Apparently the tech people are too scared to try out the OS that has been out for 4 years or w/e. He made them put it on his computer so that he could use his port replicator without having to turn off his computer. Instead of installing winXP, they just bought him a new computer.

There entire network is messed up right now. Very important CAD documents have vanished from places and have reappeared in other places in the newtwork. The back up tape drives are messed up as well. This guy that works for my dad felt really guilty because he thought he lost an enormous project. But then everyones files started disappearing.

He has been able to get them to do all of the things he wants done to modernize the company a little, or at least make it run smoother. He has quite a bit of power within the company, and the CEO likes him and listens to him, so thats good. There are other employees working there that they do not like and want to get rid of but are not because sometimes they are really good at what they do, and other times he wonders how they even have a job.

Where others see heartache, I see opportunity... (Not like the GOP, mind you) What city, and will he pay me 6 figures and a 5-year deal to make it perfect, guaranteed? Heh. See, the cool thing for a "good" tech guy is that he is not alone. Take all the companies I know of... 95% of them are in such a sad state of affairs that even a half-effort will look like Jesus is risen.

 

[MongoTheGeek]

Take a look at

http://www.computerworld.com/departments/opinions/sharktank/

They have new stories like these every day.

I submitted 2 of them

 

[Bern]

Bill Gates used the same method. He replied to a spam email which asked "Do you own a windows computer?" back in the 80's.

 

[m-dogg]

Lately our Lab email system has been getting an unusually large amount of spam, and today I found a message in my inbox titled "RE:Heaping helping of SPAM" in which a co-worker wrote "Is anyone else getting ten times the usual spam lately?"....and they used the group code, which means the message was sent to all 20,000+ employees in the Cleveland Clinic Health system.

Worse yet, about 20 peple replied to the message with one-liners like "yep, me too. Lots of spam", again using the group code.

Now our email system has fragged itself and won't even open due to the traffic.

That happens every once in a while at my (very large) company too...except the people start replying to all "this is annoying, take me off this distribution" and "me too" until everyone's email boxes get so stuffed that they can't send anymore messages...

 

[andiwm2003]

a few month ago i ordered photo prints via iphoto. something went wrong and the iphoto print service (via apple) mailed me to upload the files again.

96 other people got the same error message and ALL of their email adresses were visible to EVERYONE.

some of the people complained about the lack of privacy and security by responding to ALL 96 people.

it died down after a while but i got at least 30 mails about this and my adress was spread around to ~100 people 30 times.

i still wait for an apology from apple (or their partner) for their stupidity.

 

[Lord Blackadder]

According to our IT department, the Cleveland CLinic gets around 3 million emails per week, 80% of which is filtered out as spam. About 50% of what actually makes it into my inbox is still spam, though it is usually labelled as [POSSIBLE SPAM] and thus easily deleted.

Just think of all the bandwidth that is being wasted...I thinlk I'll start lobbying for the death penalty for convicted spammers.

 

[thedude110]

I had an ADMINISTRATOR with a DOCTORATE send that to ALL. He said he had to take chance because he needed some money. (!)

Clueless and desperate.

No wonder your administrator needs funding ...

 

[floriflee]

Ugh... don't even get me started on this. I have coworkers (well, ex-coworkers), family, friends, acquaintances who insist on the spreading of spam and replying to all when it is clearly not necessary. I wish more people would spend more time taking a look at Snope's Inboxer rebellion and less time thinking that what they have to say is so important/funny that everyone needs to hear. Why can't they just leave my inbox alone??

 

[Timepass]

In defence of your school's IT department somewhat, this is one of the biggest annoyances amongst my school's IT department. When new students arrive, in order to prevent viruses, we will throw leaflets, emails, school computer popups and the works all in an effort to get students to realise that they need to put proper virus/spyware protection on their computers...which we hand out for free whenever they need (seriously, sometimes I wind up working at 3am). If they need us to install it for them, sure thing. And yet I spend most of my work hours trying to uninfect student computers after they become so infected they're unusable. When they realise...oh, maybe I should've listened to all the info about virus protection...but I just didn't have the time!

So I guess my point is that stupid students and stupid IT service coworkers don't make the best mix...lol.

LoL such a true fact. The IT deparment more than likely made some wrong moves but at the same time it was in response to the students stupidity and not maintaining their personall computers.

That also being said 90+% of all the problems with viruses and worms out would be solved and not a problem if people would simplely do the basic things like
dont open unknown attachments or files.
Keep there computer upto date (come on the last 2 big worms out there attack computers with a hole that was patch several months before hand. People go though the release notes that M$ puts out for there patchs and then fingure out exactly what it fixed and then how to exported an UNPATCH system. This is also a reason why M$ I know at one time was making critcal updates be manditory to install and patch. Removing problems like MSblaster for ever)


That all being said I spent many long hours playing techsupport for friends fixing things that I should never of happen because of the lack of basic system maintances. Normally while I am in there fixing stuff I set many things to automaticly do it every week. I tell them I change some settings that will cover basic stuff automaticly and I may get a question a few weeks later when the computer restarts or a scan report is on there screen in the morning. I tell them what I did. If they want it undone my normall answer is no because you dont maintaintan the system and what I did covers that for me.