Third Spruce Tree On The Left

Names and emails (even Sumit’s) have been redacted to protect the innocent and the guilty. But you know who you are.

Who is Sumit B?

If you were to ask anyone who was employed at Blackberry on November 7th, 2011 this question there will most likely be a confused look on their face, like why do I know that na- and then they’ll jump up with a gleam in their eye and exclaim Of course I know who Sumit B. IS! He’s the guy.. the guy from the Reply-All thing!

Mistaken Reply-Alls to company-wide distribution lists have been happening pretty much since the invention of email. But Blackberry – or RIM, Research In Motion, is the company that invented mobile email, getting emails on your phone. You would think that they, of all companies, would be immune to the curse of company wide reply-all. And yet, Blackberry, like everywhere else, is staffed by humans, and humans are not perfect.

The saga of November 7th begins with a simple benign email. It was Sumit B’s first day at Blackberry and he needed to be added to some distribution lists. Easy enough for Sumit’s boss, Ed:

**From:** Ed  
**Sent:** Monday, November 7, 2011 4:18 PM  
**To:** Sumit B.; SAP CAB <SAPCAB@rim.com>; SAP Team <SAP@rim.com>; SAP Functional Team DL; OCS2007USERSDL 
**Subject:** Sumit B.

Please add Sumit B. to your DLs

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