Reply To All...

At my part time job we sell a magnet with a picture on it of a June Cleaver-type with an expression of horror on her face and the words:

"Had she really hit Reply to All?"

Well, recently the world of comedic magnets became my reality. Of course if you work at Travel and Transport HQ you already know that because I inexplicably notified you that I wanted an appointment to donate blood, as early as possible. But I'm getting ahead of myself.

A couple of months back, I became a member of the GoodBusiness Committee here at Travel and Transport and was authorized to send e-mails to all the employee-owners here at headquarters about our company efforts as a responsible corporate citizen. As someone who really enjoys having any type of special status or privilege, I was elated (Last year I was delighted to learn that my allergy to bee stings had reached the point that it was recommended that I start carrying around an Epinephrine shot. Fancy!).

Anyway, as Spiderman will tell you, with great gifts come great responsibility, or something like that. Perhaps it was that urge to in some way earn or be worthy of my recent deluxe permissions that led me to want to give something back.

Cynthia, our talented receptionist heads of our blood drive partnership with the Red Cross. She had sent out an e-mail asking for blood donors to the whole Travel and Transport Tower, including several of the other companies that have offices in the building. I'm a fairly regular blood donor because I'm a real fan of the brightly colored bandage wraps they give you these days. I had intended to respond to her e-mail the previous week, but had gotten distracted with other projects. So when Monday rolled around, I quickly whipped up an e-mail asking for the earliest time available hit reply and moved on with my life.

Oh, but of course, I didn't just hit "Reply" did I? No, I went for the all inclusive - the sizzler - the "Reply All".

I suppose panic hit when I started receiving out of office replies from people I didn't know at companies I had never heard of. If panic equals a tightened feeling in the chest and the sudden urge to leave the country, then it was definitely panic. The out offices e-mails were quickly followed by messages from friends giving me the business about my mistake. However, by this time I was franticly looking through my Outlook menus for the e-mail recall button. No dice, which is just as well because those retrieval messages are to me essentially the equivalent of telling everyone you e-mailed, "In case you missed it, I'm an idiot ,and if it's okay with you I'd like to retrieve the evidence of my idiocy."

In the end there was nothing to do but just ride out the storm. Some people were nice enough to tell me that they thought I sent out my e-mail to everyone intentionally in order to encourage others to donate blood. As far as I'm concerned, those people will be going to straight to heaven when they die.

The good news is that most people are evidently too busy and too nice to be very bothered by some bozo accidently e-mailing them. I just hope that will still be the case when I e-mail the whole world to tell them that I want to buy College World Series tickets.

More information about Travel and Transport's GoodBusiness Program
Travel and Transport believes that it is possible to manage our business in a way that contributes to our local and global community, addresses work force equity, and supports environmental sustainability, all without undermining the service we provide to our clients or our efforts to maximize profitability. Corporate responsibility has become a best practice. By being mindful of this on a daily basis, we extend past our legal obligations to manage our impact on the environment and become a corporate citizen that is making our communities better.

With this in mind, we created the "GoodBusiness" program, through which we focus on the efforts made by Travel and Transport within our communities to reduce waste and improve lives.

If you want more information on our program and how it works, please email me or leave a comment below. I promise that I won't forward your inquiry to the whole company...probably.