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Sharky

Shark Tank

Shark Tank: So actually, it's been performing perfectly

It's 8 a.m., and support pilot fish gets a call from the help desk. The problem: An executive is complaining that his e-mail is broken again.

"I get his office number and head down to see what the problem is this week," fish says. "The exec says he hasn't been able to receive any mail for over an hour. I take a quick look at basic settings, and they seem OK. Last e-mail in his in-box is over an hour and a half old."

What's changed in the last hour and a half? fish asks. Exec: Nothing, it just stopped working. What have you been working on this morning? asks fish. Exec replies that he's been wading through the spam in his in-box. That's what he was doing when mail just stopped arriving.

Hmm, thinks fish. "I ask if he has any mailbox rules, and he replies, why yes, and he was just working on them. He seems to think this reply is consistent with the 'Nothing, it just stopped working' response that came out of his mouth 30 seconds earlier," fish grumbles.

"Examining his mailbox rules, I find a new rule created an hour and a half before by this executive with a Ph.D. The rule reads: When new mail arrives, permanently delete."

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What People Are Saying

Our Controller complained to

Our Controller complained to me just last week that he wasn't receiving reports he was printing directly to his e-mail account. When I looked at his e-mail account, sure enough they were in his junk folder because he had blocked them accidentally.

That sounds just like an

That sounds just like an issue I was called about yesterday. The user couldn't receive email from certain people. Turns out a spam email spoofed our domain and he accidently added @ourdomain.com to his block list and incoming emails from certain fellow employees were getting dumped into his Junk folder. Luckily they weren't being permanently deleted as with in today's Shark Tank but still I found it somewhat of a coincidence to see that in today's issue.