Before I left the office on Friday, I sent out nearly 300 emails to my coworkers. Instead of setting up an auto-reply that would respond to new messages, I set it up to respond to all the messages in my inbox.

Nearly every single person in the office should have received one. And the messages don’t really make too much sense. For the most part, they landed in inboxes as replies to emails that were several weeks old. A month or two, even. And I was expecting some backlash. I thought for sure that my inbox would be full of emails saying things like:

“Thanks… I guess.”
“I was fired three weeks ago. Thanks for rubbing it in!”
“I don’t care. Why don’t you just get your work done?”
“You’re an idiot. And you’re fired.”
“Having trouble with your computer/email/brain?”
“I’m confused. Why did you send me 89 of the same email?”
“I’m going to hunt you down and murder you.”
“Thx!!! [smiley emoticon]”

Guess what I received? That’s right. Nothing. Not a word. No emails, no voicemails, no jokes in the bathroom. I suppose I should be glad that my blunder isn’t the subject of an office joke, but I think it might be better than this. It’s either one of two things: 1) They can’t figure out what happened but would rather not talk to or see me, or 2) It’s exactly the kind of stupidity they’ve come to expect (this would be sad, as I would have hoped to postpone this attitude from forming for at least another six weeks).