An apparently simple email about a holiday potluck at a state office went off the rails Friday when it was accidentally sent to approximately 25,000 state employees. (Photo: KUTV FILE) 
 
 An apparently simple email about a holiday potluck at a state office in Utah went off the rails Friday when it was accidentally sent to approximately 25,000 state employees. 
 
 
 
 One early respondent seemed to anticipate the coming storm of emails by replying to all, “braces self for receiving thousands of emails from people hitting ‘reply all’ to say they got added by mistake.” 
 
 Then the ‘reply-all’ responses began. 
 
 “STOP REPLYING TO ALL”, one ‘reply-all’ respondent wrote. 
 
 “Please remove me from this email,” another employee replied to all. 
 
 “EVERYONE STOP RESPONDING!!” responded one angry email. 
 
 
 
 A photo posted by state spokesperson Joe Dougherty showed dozens of emails sent over the course of just a few minutes around 9:30 a.m. 
 
 Dougherty posted around 11:15 a.m. to say the email chain seemed to have run its course. 
 
 Neither the offending sender, nor the department they work for were identified. 
 
 
 
 “I fear this will never end,” Lt. Governor Spencer Cox posted to twitter around 3:30 p.m. 
 
 Reply-all catastrophes pop up occasionally. A few years ago Reuters was caught up in a reply-all chain that went between the company’s 33,000 employees. That ordeal prompted at least 600 response emails. 
 
 ||||| A seemingly innocuous email exchange about a holiday gift potluck went awry after it was mistakenly sent to more than 25,000 Utah state employees. 
 
 A cascade of curt, angry and confused responses poured in to a "reply all" email chain Friday that initially sought to discuss a holiday potluck. Utah Department of Technology Services employees took to social media to urge the tens of thousands of respondents to stop replying to the email chain that deluged state employees, contractors and businesses across Utah. 
 
 And as commonly occurs amid corporate and government "reply all" chaos, the thousands of "Sent from my iPhone" messages demanding to be removed from the email thread only deepened the communication quicksand. 
 
 Getty Images Justin Sullivan/Staff 
 
 "So this is happening right now. It’s Replyall-gate 2018. Adventures in state government. #ReplyAll Actually don’t reply all," wrote Joe Dougherty, a Public Information Officer for -- perhaps ironically -- the Utah Division of Emergency Management. 
 
 Dozens of responses posted to social media by Utah state government employees and affiliates ranged from inquisitive, "Is it a white elephant type of swap?" to comical, "I'm sorry you have to uninvite the entire State Government," to the downright angry, "Remove me from this email thread now!" 
 
 The thousands of polite responses asking to be removed from the "reply all" emails clogged up phones and state employee computers for several hours Friday morning. But those seemingly helpful replies along with dozens of "EVERYONE STOP RESPONDING" responses only amplified the crescendo of emails. 
 
 Screenshot: Twitter/Joe Dougherty 
 
 Utah Lt. Gov. Spencer Cox added a little humor and weighed in on the "cc" calamity Friday afternoon, "This is real and it’s an emergency. Started out as a potluck and $5 white elephant gift exchange in one department and someone accidentally cc’d every state employee. I fear this will never end." 
 
 "This was a genuine crisis, but it happens every day on a smaller level. Some people simply can't not #replyall, so prevention is key: send large group emails to yourself w/ bcc to other recipients, and hope somebody doesn't 'loop' others in," tweeted Josh Loftin, Director of Communications and Public Information Officer at the Utah Department of Heritage and Arts. 
 
 Salt Lake City's local CBS affiliate KUTV reported that neither the offending sender nor the department they worked in was publicly divulged as of the end of the workday Friday. ||||| Tweet with a location 
 
 You can add location information to your Tweets, such as your city or precise location, from the web and via third-party applications. You always have the option to delete your Tweet location history. Learn more ||||| Someone mistakenly sent a potluck invite to 25,000 Utah state employees — nearly the entire state workforce — Friday, reported KUTV. Then the reply-all emails began. 
 
 
 
 
 
 “So this is happening right now. It’s Replyall-gate 2018. Adventures in state government,” wrote Utah public information office Joe Dougherty on Twitter about 9:30 a.m. Friday. 
 
 His post included a long chain of reply-all emails to the 25,000 recipients of the errant invite. Many begged fellow respondents to stop hitting reply-all, while others resorted to all-caps demands to “STOP THE MADNESS.” 
 
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 So this is happening right now. It’s Replyall-gate 2018. Adventures in state government. #ReplyAll Actually don’t reply all. pic.twitter.com/8loT09CM4s — Joe Dougherty (@PIO_Joe) December 7, 2018 
 
 “I … want to die,” reported one state worker on Twitter, while another reported receiving 51 reply-all emails to the invite in mere minutes. 
 
 someone over at the department of corrections accidentally invited every single state of utah employee to their holiday potluck....and now there's an email chain....and i .....want to die — too depressed to put up Christmas decorations (@the1kim) December 7, 2018 At 9:27 am I got this email which was apparently sent by the Dept of Corrections to every employee of the State of Utah. Ten minutes later I’m up to 51 responses of people saying “please don’t reply to all.” I’m wondering how many hundreds more I’ll get before DTS pulls the plug. pic.twitter.com/4y8LhY85xu — Peter Gessel (@PeterGessel) December 7, 2018 dear lord. someone sent an email to the entire State of Utah and now everyone is replying to all. — Amanda Rock (@amanda__reads) December 7, 2018 
 
 Even Lt. Gov. Spencer Cox commented on the fiasco on Twitter, calling it “an emergency.” 
 
 “This is real and it’s an emergency,” Cox wrote. “Started out as a potluck and $5 white elephant gift exchange in one department and someone accidentally cc’d every state employee. I fear this will never end.” 
 
 This is real and it’s an emergency. Started out as a potluck and $5 white elephant gift exchange in one department and someone accidentally cc’d every state employee. I fear this will never end. https://t.co/fL1NBOlsZW — Spencer Cox (@SpencerJCox) December 7, 2018 
 
 But by 11:10 a.m. Friday, the flood of reply-all emails seemed to be abating, Dougherty reported on Twitter. 
 
 “Ok. It’s 11:10 am and I think it’s safe to say the great #ReplyAll disaster of 2018 is finally over. Thank you for playing!” he wrote. 
 
 Ok. It’s 11:10 am and I think it’s safe to say the great #ReplyAll disaster of 2018 is finally over. Thank you for playing! pic.twitter.com/WXtK1G01Fs — Joe Dougherty (@PIO_Joe) December 7, 2018 
 
 “A reply all broadcast storm is the closest we’ll get to perpetual energy,” commented one observer on Twitter. 
 
 A reply all broadcast storm is the closest we’ll get to perpetual energy. — Dave Holzer and the turtle he rode in on. (@daholzer) December 7, 2018
– "STOP THE MADNESS!!!!," "dear lord," and "I want to die" were just a few of the responses to what was meant to be a routine email Friday about a seasonal potluck party in a Utah state office, per the Miami Herald. What caused the holiday hubbub: The email meant for one department was accidentally sent to more than 25,000 employees throughout the state, leading to what Newsweek calls "a cascade of curt, angry, and confused responses" when recipients started hitting "reply all" in their return correspondence, KUTV reports. Unable to simply ignore the mass email, hordes of workers, both irritated and amused, tried to get off the "reply all" chain by … replying to all with that request, which Newsweek notes "only deepened the communication quicksand." "It's Replyall-gate 2018. Adventures in state government," one worker tweeted as it was happening, while another worried the messages wouldn't taper off: "I fear this will never end." In addition to the snark and outrage, some replies were genuine queries about what to bring to the potluck, as well as to the white-elephant gift exchange also set to take place. A Utah communications professional offers some advice to those who want to avoid the same "reply all" fiasco happening when they have their own email to send out. "Prevention is key: send large group emails to yourself w/ bcc to other recipients, and hope somebody doesn't 'loop' others in," he tweeted. Neither the person who sent the email, nor the department, had been IDed by EOD Friday.