echo request 

When an incompetent employee makes continuous, connected, inefficient email requests of a top employee, each one followed by another like a never-ending Matryoshka doll. The expert answers the question or provides the information and the asker makes an follow-up request that could easily have been made as part of the initial question, not unlike a three-year-old in a “Why?” fatal embrace.

It is the electronic version of someone who won’t leave your office, and an example of modern corporate inefficiency. It is also the reason why top people need firewalls to prevent them from bombardments of stupidity. In the past, it was the live executive assistant or receptionist. Now, since most experts are not executives and don’t have administrative assistants screening their email, bumbling, disorganized employees can waste large gobs of (presumably more expensive) time with incomplete request after incomplete request.

Email from incompetent: Hey, can you get me the sales numbers from the third quarter?

Email response from expert: Sure, here they are (attached).

(five minutes later)
Email from incompetent: Hey, can you also send me projections for fourth quarter?

(expert, yelling at monitor): Why didn't you ask for that before? I have a meeting in five minutes and have to deal with an echo request from Dave in Logisitics?! Come on!

echo request by TissPee January 22, 2010