Organised chaos in Berlin

We've sometimes covered "Reply all" email errors in the past on the understanding that any organisation that lets them get out of hand must be laughably incompetent. We are reassessing this point of view after email slowed to a crawl in the German parliament last week, perhaps the least laughably incompetent location on the planet.

Someone called "Babette" accidentally mailed 4,000 fellow staff to ask "Please bring me a copy of the new directory". Hundreds took the opportunity to post replies to everyone to complain, ask 4,000 people where all the complaints were coming from, or just make silly jokes.

One staffer posted that the mess was so much fun that they should do it every month - handily rescuing the German parliament's reputation for efficiency by suggesting that, in future, it schedules its chaos.