A benign school email notified students of some survey research that showed up on everyone’s notifications. You may have perhaps given it a quick glance, or maybe you ignored it entirely, until a sound from the same email popped up again and again and again. This led you to open up the email and get bombarded with lines and lines of replies. So what happened? 

The email about Oswego’s branding exploration and their partnership  with Hanover Research, an independent market research firm, was sent out on Nov. 15. The official Thanksgiving break lasted from  Nov. 20 to 27 as many were  returning home and relaxing with their families. The chain began on Nov. 22  as an accidental “reply to all” message contacted everyone in the student body.

Messages ranging from people saying “Happy Thanksgiving,” “get me outta here,” “what is this,” memes and dinner pictures were seen by all. The spam incident was the talk of the day in many friend groups. While funny and pretty harmless in retrospect, this brings into question the space for humor like this in a professional setting. The email was through the school and was not intended to be used as a school-wide group chat, which made it more funny. I forgot about Thanksgiving entirely, and enjoyed seeing what chaotic image someone might post next. It seems that most people replying to the email were surprised they even had the ability to send a message to the entire school.

Others may not have wanted a single reminder about school, so the constant notifications blowing up phones could be understandably quite annoying. If you were home asleep in bed and heard your phone making a buzzing noise, you would not be happy.

Humor is subjective and also very much based on the mood of the individual. In professional workplaces, humor is good for communicating between coworkers. However, between a boss and subordinate, it muddies the waters of acceptable behavior as there is always a power dynamic. You might not like a boss’s joke for instance, but fake laugh at the same thing over and over. I believe that yes, humor has a place in a professional setting, as long as you want to be involved in it.

Photo by:  Gabriella Patterson