Most people would be happy to find less spam in their inbox.

But when this tech worker’s manager noticed fewer emails coming through, he started worrying that something was wrong with the mail server.

A little shocked, he tried to figure out what was making his boss think this.

As it turned out, his manager didn’t really have any solid evidence. He was working off a “feeling.”

Even though he doubted anything was wrong, he put aside what he was doing and started going through the email logs.

Read on to see what he found.

Not enough spam? another $bigboss incident

We ran a fairly basic mail server, with an anti-spam blacklist and DNS blacklist, so not totally “Wild West,” but not like a fancy corporate or outsourced solution for sure.

Anyway, our story starts with me working hard, probably reading Slashdot or something similar. I get an email from $bigboss. He’s concerned that there is something wrong with our email. He isn’t getting as many messages as he would expect to, not even getting as much spam as he’s used to.

I’m kind of raising an eyebrow at this. Not many folks complain about NOT getting spam.

After speaking with the boss, he dove into email logs.

Anyway, I follow up with him to see if he has any examples of messages he EXPECTED to get but did not. Has someone told him that they sent him something but he did not receive it? No, it’s just a feeling. He’s sure he isn’t getting as many emails as normal. Please, can I check it out?

We did track email on a very macro level: total messages in and out, graphed hourly, spam messages, fairly basic stuff, nothing at the user level. So, to the mail logs I go.

I spent about an hour going back through the logs, grepping for messages to $bigboss, sorting and counting them day to day for the previous week. Of course, what I found is the number of messages varied enough each day that I couldn’t really tell if he was missing any or not.

Luckily, that was the end of it.

And all the time, I’m rolling my eyes over the time-wasting because $bigboss has a “feeling.” No other user is raising this issue. I’m certainly not seeing it myself.

After my sorting/counting/comparing project produces no real results (not that I expected it to), I email him that I’ve checked, don’t see anything wrong, our mail volume is about what it normally is, certainly not markedly different than the day before, but I’ll keep an eye on it “just in case.”

He emails back a thank you, and that’s the end of it.

He never raised this issue again, and I think he was probably being bugged by something completely different and just needed to vent to someone who had to listen.

Wow! Imagine missing spam emails!

Let’s check out what the fine folks over at Reddit think about what happened.

Most people won’t speak to their manager like this, though.

According to this reader, he should check in and make sure the man is doing okay.

This would be kinda funny.

If you enjoyed this story, check out this post about a widow who returned to a store to thank employees for their kindness to her late husband.

For this person, the feeling was accurate.

It’s hard to blame him for feeling like his boss wasted his time.

Sure, nobody wants to miss an important email, but fewer spam messages hardly seem like a reason to worry.

And without an example of something missing, his boss wasn’t giving him much to work with.

Hopefully, next time he’ll make sure there’s an actual problem before sending IT looking for it.