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Outlook: snarky

When my officemate threw up his hands in frustration one time too many after Microsoft Outlook crashed, I felt the need to send a happygram to Bill Gates. Feeling prankish, I rattled off this email:

—–Original Message—–
From: Mark Turner [mailto:jmarkturner at blah blah blah . com]
Sent: Monday, September 29, 2008 00:23 AM
To: Bill Gates
Subject: Thanks!

Mr. Gates,

Thanks so much for creating Microsoft Outlook. My life is so much better because of it.

Best Regards,

Mark Turner
Raleigh, NC

I about fell out of my chair laughing when I got this response back from his administrative staff just now:

——– Original Message ——–
Subject: Thanks!
Date: Tue, 30 Sep 2008 13:52:04 -0700
From: Executive Response Team
To: jmarkturner at blah blah blah . com

Thank you for your email to Bill Gates. Bill appreciates your taking the time to write and express support for his work.

Kind regards,
Office of the Chairman

Observation #1: Looks like I gave it the right level of snark.
Observation #2: Microsoft can afford to pay people to respond to nonsense like this? (Or is this response from a bot? Hmm.)

If you’re reading this Mr. Gates, thanks for the laugh!

Published

  3. ’cause MS programmers all suck, right? Like the Eds?

    How about programmers who use/have used their programming tools? Like…oh, your brother! Do they suck too?

    also dude, your email seemed too genuine. It didn’t drip of sarcasm at all. So, was this snarky? I dunno, maybe. Self-indulgent and holier-than-thou? Yeah…

  5. Hahaha…fair enough but dude, seriously…that wasn’t a snarky email. It seemed to genuine. Snarky would have been commenting on how bad things were helpful and how you were happy that it was missing useful and productive features. How would anyone know (unless they knew you personally) that that was a sarcastic email?

  6. Maybe I’m assuming too much, but I would suppose that most people know that Bill Gates isn’t the only one who works at Microsoft. But yeah, you’re right. The email could be read as an innocent man-on-the-street. Needs more snark, I guess.

  7. My, “you have mail” message is the Oh Eh Oh song from the Wizard of OZ…

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