Life of a Lab Rat

Let us imagine a laboratory building with seven floors, numbered '2' through '8' (yes, I know; I'm sorry it has to be this way). In this building there are many students, the newest of whom have been working there, in the labs, for a month now. Let us also envisage that mailing lists exist for the benefit of the building's denizens.

If we were to imagine — hypothetically of course — that if a 'coordinator' for one of the floors of the building wanted to contact the new students that worked on the floor, that they might avail themselves of the mailing list facility. Let us suppose that this 'coordinator' wanted to brief the new students on their floor, about general 'housekeeping' — use of shared facilities and whatnot. One might suppose that a single email to the entire staff complement might be excused, or even expected. One might wonder why they allowed a month to pass before arranging the briefing, but that's beside the point.

But let us suppose — we are being equally hypothetical, naturally — that this coordinator spent the five minutes after sending the first email composing a second, in which they complain (in some detail) to the entire department that a common piece of equipment was left in a mess. We might want to suggest that the messy scientist was one of the new students, and really, we do not all need to know that they are not yet potty trained. As a 'coordinator', maybe we could even expect that they would have got the email addresses of the new students and grouped them together in their address book.

A third email three minutes later, again being very specific about a failure in that floor's facilities and procedures and sent to the entire department — well, no one could conceive of such a thing, surely?