Tuesday, June 8, 2010

Updates From Lee...Whether I Want Them Or Not

As many of you know, my work email account is my contact with the outside world.  Several times during the day I will check my email, and if the content in my inbox is deemed worthy, (By me of course.) it is forwarded out across the nation so that my email contacts can enjoy a good laugh.  In the last week however, the email forwarding tables have been turned on me.  Because of this, I now receive something called “Lee’s Updates.”

Keep in mind that the only Lee I personally knew died about 6 years ago.  So this new Lee is a complete mystery to me.  The forwards started last week with “Lee” emailing me talking about how he would know how to fix the oil leak in the gulf, but no one had asked him to help.  I don’t quite know what background Lee has that would qualify him to fix the biggest oil spill of all time, but according to him he is the man.  I bet Lee is sitting in his house right now, cape and mask at the ready, waiting for the BP executives call so he can leap into action and plug the hole that is causing so much heartache right now.

Today Lee informs me that he is currently running over 9000 projects, and because of that he is a very diverse person.  9000?? Really Lee?  It was after this email I decided to take some action.  I noticed that there was a section at the bottom of the email that said I could opt out of Lee’s updates at any time.  Since I don’t really care that much about Lee and his updates, I clicked on the unsubscribe.  Of course all that did was take me to a server page where I had to enter a name and password to cancel the emails.  After trying every password and name in the book, and being denied every time, I gave up trying to rid my inbox of Lee.  The situation called for a more drastic measure.

You see, about the same time I started receiving Lee’s updates, our cyber security department added a suspicious email button to our email program.  Any spam email you receive is supposed to go to this new place.  After thinking about it, I was going to send Lee their way.  I mean, I did not sign up for Lee’s updates.  They had been forced upon me by this character, and having no way to rid myself of his emails, I was left with no choice but to use my brand new spam eliminator.

I sent Lee’s email on its way, feeling satisfied that I had rid myself of his updates.  No longer would Lee be able to force himself on me ever again.  But my joy was short lived.  I found out this afternoon the Lee is actually Lee McIntire, CEO of CH2MHill.  That’s right, I reported the CEO of the company I work for to the email police.  Hopefully ol’ Lee has a sense of humor about these kind of things, and everything will turn out OK.