I spent about 15 years as an independent consultant at the largest employer in the US, USPS. My classification was Senior Computer Communication Systems Architect. As a practical matter, I spent all my time down in the trenches cleaning up defects in international mail tracking systems.
A common event in a large internal email community regarded distribution lists. High level executives and managers love to call attention to themselves in cast of thousands meetings and emails to everyone who works under them. For their convenience they had their assistants concoct email distribution lists so that they could manifest their importance with a single keystroke.
Often problems arose when someone replied to one of the pronouncements. The reply would go to everyone on the list. Then there would be many replies to the reply, telling people to ignore the reply. This would create a kind of snow storm of useless emails that could not be stopped. Recipients had to discipline themselves to ignore everything related to the original email.
My job was to clean up problems.
Once I received an email concerning a sword that had been mailed that various inspectors had flagged as illegitimate in international mail.
I carefully investigated the issue and found that the email had been kicking around through the system for over a year. It was a hot potato. The original complaint had crossed the desks of over 100 people without any resolution. Further investigation revealed that the original complaint had simply been an inquiry. More examination of the email thread showed me that over time the issue had evolved into something that was precisely the opposite of what it originally had been.
I wrote a brief explanation of the issue to everyone, pointing out the timeline, the dead interest, and the reversal of issues. The reverberation stopped.