Maria Peterson, a deputy director at Utah’s Department of Corrections, sent an email last week to invite about 80 of her colleagues to the annual holiday party.
Unbeknownst to her, the email was erroneously sent to about 22,000 people.
What happened next has been dubbed “replyall-pocalpyse,” “potluckgate,” and “reply all madness” by the New York Times. You guessed it… many of the recipients of Peterson’s invitation responded by replying to everyone on the email. Peterson’s inbox blew up. The state’s technology department corrected the error 12 minutes after the initial email was sent, so that Peterson was the only person who received a response from anyone who replied-all. Still, the damage was done. The thousands of replies ended up clogging the state’s phone and email systems for several hours.
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