Reply All

I’ve been busy learning about how to make an F1 car ugly but fast for the last few weeks.  F1 Team Management for Dummies has also been on my reading list.  I’m worried that Snob Duben is not up to the task of assembling the cars and enough spares to last a full season.  The research has indicated that the team would need some silver paint and a three-pointed star on the front of the car in order to compete for wins.  Those cars seem to be in short supply, so as always; AcMo has to find a different method to get it.

Now that it appears the team is not going to be able to move into Ferrari’s Italian headquarters, the original plan had to be resurrected.  The advanced concept plastic cars and driver are the best plan at this time.  Johnny Jamz will not have his contract terminated after all.  That’s fine because he is still stuck to the ceiling.  The glue Snob used forms an almost unbreakable bond.  He may have to saw off Johnny’s legs to extricate him and then glue him back together on the ground.  That’s one option, I’m sure Snob has a few of his own, but they won’t be as good as mine.

Learning anything can become boring and tedious if the lesson plans aren’t created well and followed in an exact manner.  This is a problem since I’ve never been able to follow directions.  It has to be the result of a medical condition.  Perhaps I am the first non-medical professional to realize and diagnose this?  Another potential AcMo advance has been uncovered.  Or I’m just bad at following directions.  It’s hard to tell.

The best way for me to learn something is by taking long breaks between each lesson.  My last break lasted two days short of one year.  Granted I’ve forgotten everything I learned, but that allows me to re-learn with a fresh perspective.  My most recent break has involved searching for a special vehicle for Snob Duben.  He is using a small portion of his F1 sponsorship money to buy himself a legitimate sports car.

Snob is smart enough to know that AcMo is the company, and that I’m the person to find the car he seeks.  The problem is that he appears to be looking for a car with options that just don’t exist.  He refuses to believe that automotive unicorns aren’t real.  That makes my job harder, but the customer is always right, so I keep searching for something I know I can’t find.  I don’t care too much because he’ll fold before I will.  Either way, I win.

All of that leads me to what has to be the worst option ever created in the history of email options:  reply-all.  I'm sure everyone knows someone who has mistakenly hit reply all on a message that was supposed to be private.

Armageddon almost occurred yesterday.  AcMo had its version of the Cuban missile crisis.  It was averted by a last second message from Snob Duben.  This of course all started because of a car.  One of the vehicles I had found for Snob’s review appeared to have curious damage around the ignition lock based on inspection of one of the pics.  Snob won’t provide status updates on the car construction project, but he responds to messages about his potential new road car milliseconds after the message has been received.  Go figure.

So on behalf of Snob, I emailed the dealership to inquire about the photo.  I put Snob on the bcc list so that he would see that I made the inquiry.  I told him that I didn’t expect to receive a response, but that I would let him know.  I also said that the dealership might take a photo of a different car and send that as proof the part was fine.  I was not familiar with this dealership, and I’m not suggesting they have a reputation for that kind of thing; I was just raising it as a possible response.

The dealership did respond and the sales representative told me that it was just the photo, but that there were light scratches around the face of the cylinder as the result of someone missing the slot 6000 times.  I was skeptical, but then the secondary pics indicated just that.  I gave myself a pat on the back for solving another mystery and waited for Snob’s response.  He agreed that the images showed superficial scratches and also mentioned that he too thought it was possible the pics could be from a different car.  What I hadn’t realized at the time was that he had mistakenly(?) replied all and the sales representative was now aware that I had sent others his message and was skeptical of his ethics.  I can understand that a reasonable person might take offense to that.

Snob told me that the sales rep responded directly to him.  I had to e-torture him to divulge the contents of the message.  Snob told me that the rep said, “‘eff off and to find a car to buy from someplace else.”  I went ballistic!  I started crafting war plans because I was going to take down this sales rep and the dealership that employed him!  No one was safe.  His behavior was even less professional than mine.  That was unacceptable.

I created the email that was going to be the first strike in my new campaign to shut down this dealership and ruin the sales rep’s career.  It was hump day and I wasn’t doing anything anyway, so no big deal.  I had even thought about testing our instant package delivery system to see if we had worked out the survivability bugs.

It is a good thing I counted to ten thousand before I sent the message.  I might have been banned from every automotive circle again if I had pressed launch.  Besides making me look unstable and even more unprofessional, that aborted message would have forced me into the uncomfortable position of owing the dealership an apology for my unprovoked tirade.  I would never have been able to show my face in that dealership using this name.

There was a small part of me that told me something wasn’t right.  It turns out that Snob was playing a cruel joke on me, and I fell for it like a fool.  To be honest, I didn’t think he had it in him to play me like that.  My game needs work.

What actually happened is that the sales representative took the message like a professional and ignored our anonymous character assassination.  He simply said that he thought the lighting somehow caused the original photo to look like there was damage when none appears to be present.  The good news is that I can now drop out of negotiations for this vehicle if Snob decides to proceed and watch from a safe distance if this is all a plot to get Snob into the dealership so they can teach him a lesson mob style in one of the trunks of their pre-owned vehicles.

This was by far not the first time the reply-all menace has occurred to someone in my network, but this is the least innocuous and most recent example I can share because it hasn’t resulted in any tears or bloodshed yet.  I’m sure everyone who reads this knows of someone who has made that fateful mistake at least once.  I haven’t yet, but I’m good like that.