'The email systems melted down. Everything went offline': Completely clueless employee emails 30,000 people about an apartment, spawning thousands of emails

This dude told a hilarious story of email insanity, writing, "I witnessed this astounding IT meltdown around 2004 in a large academic organization…" As the OP, u/sfsdfd, told to r/talesfromtechsupport, one employee ruined an entire email system for basically everyone involved. 

It all started in an organization of about 30,000 people in an academic setting. Lots of people went on vacation at the same time, so there were lots of "I'm on vacation" auto-replies going out. That was no problem at all. The issue arose when one employee decided to bring a personal issue to the attention of literally everyone, including the CEO! 

All this woman wanted to do was ask if anyone had any information about a local apartment she could rent. Unfortunately, her request triggered an auto-reply nightmare, thanks to the many folks who were vacationing at the time. These emails kept replying to each other — and to the 30,000 people on the email chain — resulting in literally a half million emails to this system! It sounds like an annoying or hilarious day to be at that job, depending on who you are, and at least the OP got a great laugh out of it! 

Next, this person got the pleasure of reporting their own company's labor practices – not that they didn't try to tell their HR department first.

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Author image for Remy Millisky Remy Millisky
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