It reminds me of the classic "500 mile email" https://www.ibiblio.org/harris/500milemail.html

The excel email attachments one was insane, and great writeup

(https://www.reddit.com/r/sysadmin/comments/9si6r9/postmortem...)

One of my favorite conference talks is semi related to problems like this. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fE2KDzZaxvE Brian Cantrill - Zebras all the way down