I get something like 400 emails a day at work on an average day. I work in a fairly fast-paced role but it can't be that unusual. People naturally sometimes struggle to keep on top of emails and grumble about it but it is what it is. A lot of what we do is team based so in the nature of the job its necessary to include anything from three to ten team members in an email so people are aware of what's happening even if not directly relevant to them. This means you sometimes end up with a lot of spam or irrelevant email.
Periodically someone will come up with the bright idea of trying to reduce inbox traffic and there will be invocations to not "reply all" to people saying "thanks" etc and campaigns to 'spare inboxes'. A completely understandable sentiment but it never works: in the ten plus years I've worked at my company this has been tried at least five times, usually by a newcomer, always without success, and always quietly dropped.
More recently someone has come up with the idea of "sanctioning" repeat offenders who reply all under what is being called the "spare you inbox" policy. The idea is that people who reply all improperly will be subject to some as yet unspecified sanction.
AIBU to think its futile to try to contain this and trying to mandate it is a bit nuts? It's like trying to hold back the tide. Cutting down on one or two unnecessary emails out of several hundred a day won't touch the sides. Also because in the nature of the work you have to have visibility across what's happening so better for people to have one or two pointless emails a day they can delete than miss something important? And ultimately because it's impossible to police this during a busy working day and giving people sanctions for stuff like this is going to create unnecessary resentment.
I think the whole idea of 'sparing your inbox' (which you see all the time in the world of work) is a nonsense and the answer is just to ignore or delete the emails rather than creating even more pointless and burdensome email etiquette?