A student in my Hofstra public speaking course did his final exam on “Reply All.” His thesis suggested that if you “reply all” you keep everyone in the loop. However, I have a different idea.
Should you reply all?
Whenever someone sends out a message to a group, no matter if it’s one person or it’s more than 100 people, someone inevitably replies all! Within moments, my inbox is clogged up with “congratulations” or “thank you’s” to the sender and everyone received the information.
This doesn’t just happen with emails. It also happens often with text messages. I’m sorry I just can’t stand these group text messages and then you continuously get text messages from everyone in the group. The only way around it is to leave the group or shut off the notifications, which I always end up doing.
I don’t want to seem harsh here, but don’t you think we get enough emails and text messages? I find it particularly especially now that most of us are homebound because of the coronavirus pandemic.
Why do people reply all?
I started to wonder about this. Are people unaware? Or, are they replying all because they want everyone to see their response? Is it something they are doing to be “political?”
Am I the only one who minds getting these emails?
Why aren’t people just sending their responses to the sender?
The other day, I got an email congratulating someone on their promotion. Following that, I got about two dozen emails saying, “congratulations.”
Don’t you think that wastes everyone’s time or is it just me?
I would love to hear your thoughts.
