Sometimes, when I write my column, I’ll begin with one thought and wind up someplace completely different. The trick for me is to try and make a connection between both thoughts, even if that connection seems a bit tenuous.
I’m not so sure I achieved that this month.
The basic idea I started with was the abuse of the ‘reply to all’ function in emails. I found plenty of good material including this article by Matthew Lee on the Huffington Post blog about a “reply to all” frenzy that almost shut down the computers at the State Department and this story by Dylan Stableford in Folio about a company that became so frustrated with ‘reply to all’ abuse that they eliminated the function on the company email system.
Yet somehow, while writing the column, I couldn’t get out of my head the fact that I totally screwed up on the county’s new holiday slide schedule for trash collection.
I read it about, I got a postcard about it, and I even heard people joke about it. Still when it came my day to slide I screwed up. I wasn’t the only one either. Judging from the number of trash receptacles in my neighborhood that stayed on the curb for an extra day, I had plenty of company.
So I tried to tie the trash schedule and the ‘reply to all’ issue together in my column.
How’d I do?
You can judge for yourself by reading this month’s column here.
