Sometime over the weekend I got added to a massive CC list on a moronic chain letter that's currently making the rounds at work. It's one of those brain-dead notes that claims you'll get paid by Microsoft/AOL/Disney/the Illuminati for forwarding it to "everyone you know". Bill Gates himself wrote an essay debunking this stoopid thing four years ago, which should give you some idea of just how big a mouth-breather you have to be to actually forward this to everyone in your corporate address book. Not to mention the fact that forwarding chain letters is expressly forbidden in the employees' handbook. Oopsie, here comes the Evil HR Director to whack you with a cluestick!

Of course, what makes these chain letter outbreaks even more special is the cadre of deep thinkers who hit Reply-to-All and demand, in BOLDFACE ALL CAPS, to be removed from this mailing list. As of this writing, I have received one reply-to-all debunking the note, twenty-nine (count 'em) indignant take-me-off responses, three people attempting to recall their indignant take-me-off responses, eight people explaining why you shouldn't hit reply-to-all, another person agreeing with those people, and to top it off, a note from customer services (an outsourcer in this case) telling us that they're aware of it and are looking into it. The fact that this last note came from an anonymous CS worker more than five hours after the original flood of notes began is of great comfort to us all, I'm sure.

Days like this I think that maybe some employees really are worth more to the company dead than alive.