Please fix your Autoresponse

[Helen McCall]

Dear Michael Robson,

The message I sent to your postmaster, whom I assume to have been your
stand-in, was sent privately. Your auto-responder started hitting me in a
week when I found myself having to sort out a large number of really
senseless mess-ups by operators from numerous organisations. By Sunday, I
was in a foul mood and not feeling in the least bit sympathetic to any
operations staff, let alone one who had set his auto-responder to hit one
of my mailboxes, whilst he (you) had apparently gone swanning of on a
fortnight's holiday.

Had you replied privately to my private message, and explained how it had
happened, I would have apologised for my angry words.

However; since you have instead decided to compound your error by
attempting to severely humiliate me in public, and to publish defamatory
statements concerning me, I now have no choice but to take up the matter
of your abuse of the Internet, and public defamation, with your
University's Vice Chancellor.

Yours Sincerely,

Helen McCall

 --

On Wed, 1 Dec 1999, Michael Robson wrote:

> Date: Wed, 1 Dec 1999 18:20:54 +0000
> From: Michael Robson <mike at fs1.mcc.ac.uk>
> Reply-To: Michael.Robson at mcc.ac.uk
> To: freebsd-users at freebsd-uk.eu.org
> Cc: helen at dinoflagellate.demon.co.uk
> Subject: Re: Please fix your Autoresponse
> 
> Apologies to everyone one on the freeBSD list (_apart_ from Helen 
> McCall) for my vacation message being sent to this list: My partner 
> gave birth to our daughter 10 days earlier then planned and so I 
> found myself in the position of trying to get a couple of weeks work 
> done in one afternoon before I could commence my paternity leave. In 
> my haste, I mispelt the freeBSD emailing address in my 'vacation 
> message exclusions list' file (by 1 letter) of 40 or so email lists. 
> I hope this has now been corrected correctly.
> 
> 
> > Please will you fix the autoresponse which keeps sending me messages like
> > the one included below.
> > 
> Surely it would be the autorespon_der_ that sends the message, 
> rather than the message itself? It wasn't _like_ the one 'included 
> below' but but _exactly as_ the one 'included below'.
> 
> 
> > You appear to have a complete imbecile called Michael Robson on your staff
> > who has set his vacation response to work on mail from the freebsd list.
> > 
> > Please will you also arrange for some basic training to teach him how to
> > exclude list mail addresses from his auto responses.
> > 
> I'd prefer you to teach me how to be perfect, just like you.
> 
> > The content of his autoresponse suggests that he is responsible for your
> > networking support, and should certainly know better than to to this.
> >
> ...better than to to this??
> 
> > Hence my comment on his imbecility. God help you all if you have to
> > rely on him for network support! :-{
> > 
> > > 
> > > AUTOMATIC VACATION MESSAGE:
> > > 
> > > I am away until the 14th of December and will answer your message
> > > on my return. Network problems reported to the Operations Bridge on
> > > (0161 275) 6001 will be directed to an appropriate member of the
> > > COS-SYS networking team.
> > > 
> I hope Helen that one day you may learn to appreciate that it is 
> actually possible to make mistakes without actually being an 
> imbecile. I also hope that you might try to appreciate that because 
> of my situation, I had other things on my mind other than checking my 
> email, which resulted in the long period of time before I actually 
> discovered this mistake. There is often more to a situation than that 
> which appears on the surface and so it would perhaps be nice 
> if you could learn to get the 'complete picture' _before_  'flying 
> off the handle'.
> 
> Michael Robson.
>