“What is this? Is this for real? What the hell?-- Holy shit! I was not supposed to get this!”
The above is a snippet from my internal monologue upon receiving an email from a friend today. I imagine there were about 11 similar internal monologues going on about the same time, as that is the number of people my friend sent this “accidental email” to.
Apparently said friend was having a conversation via email with a close female friend, while at the same time emailing jokes to a group of us other friends.
Somehow-- and this is the part I am definitely going to grill him on at some point-- he copied the mailing list that the jokes were going to into the “TO:” slot of the email he was replying to, to his “special friend.”
Now, I’ve read about such things happening, notably on Snopes (I & II). But never in my wildest dreams did I ever think such a delicious e-fuckup would grace my inbox.
Now, the people receiving this accidental email included: me, six of my buddies (male), two of their wives, another buddy’s fiance, and two guys this dumbass works with.
The accidental email consisted of a series of replies between the two lovebirds, so it needed to be read from the ground up. Once I realized this, I made a bee-line to the bottom of the page and lunged in to the dirty little dialogue.
Obviously I’m not going to reveal the names of the involved parties or even copy and paste the email itself, but, let me assure you, it was rife with gems like “gettin your face all messy next time” and “I was wondering if I shoot an abnormal amount.”
Ahhhh, sometimes happiness does just fall in my lap. This will provide much entertainment for my friends and me for years and years and years and years.
And don’t feel bad for this guy; he was doing it on a work email (which is pretty moronic in the first place), and this is one of those guys (who because of his history with the ladies) really needed this to happen to him.
Any other good stories of accidental emails out there?
I tend to get a few accidental emails from strangers.
One was of a very naught nature, but I don’t remember the specifics.
I just replied, “I don’t think big boy got your message. Please try again.”
The most recent was someone trying to coordinate travel plans with their mate in Australia. I just let him know that he needed to try again if he wanted his mate to meet him at the train station.
There was a famous time at my company where a very shy and unassuming administrative assistant type accidentally emailed to the whole company (about 300 people) her lonnng reply to one of her friends about which club they were going to go to that weekend, what they thought of various other clubs, etc.
It wasn’t really scandalous stuff but I had never heard the person sending it say two words together so it was kind of surprising to find she was so garrolous and socialable in email.
I have set up my work email so I can’t send a message to the whole company even if I wanted to…there is no reason why I ever would so why take the risk?
Funny, something similar happened to me just yesterday.
Our neighborhood has a homeowners’ association, and the board of directors is made up of residents. The HOA has an electronic mailing list for neighborhood news and bulletins about community events and suchlike.
“Mary” posted a nice note along these lines yesterday. “Sue,” intending to respond privately to Mary, instead sent a message to the entire group. It thanked Mary for the neighborhood information, and then went on to address another issue.
Sue outlined her dismay over a drunken pool party that was held after operating hours at the neighborhood pool. She acknowledged that Mary had complained to her about it, and told Mary she had passed along the complaint to “John,” who is evidently the chairman of the board.
Then she complained that John was being a “horse’s ass” about it.
And assured Mary that she refused to reveal Mary’s identity as the complaining party (oops!).
And emphasized her anger over the incident, especially since the bibulous swimmers were board members: “Jim, Jane, and Sally.”
I am *so * going to the next HOA meeting so I can lay eyes on these folks personally.
Some guy who worked for one of my former employers sent out a note to his girl friend and accidently copied everyone in the entire company in every office across the country. I didn’t even know the guy. The note was fairly unremarkable except for the fact that he signed it “Oceans of Love.”
For about the next year “oceans of love” became a catch phrase at the company. We’d sign our emails with that phrase. We’d use it as a greeting and a good-bye. Great fun at the poor schmuck’s expense.
cc:mail used to be set up at my old employer so that if you reply all to a message that was bcc’d to a bunch of ppl iincluding you, then it would go out to that entire group, even though you could not see it. Also the first entry in the address book was the all employees mail list.
Someone sent out messages, bcc’d to the entire corporation about whether some woman should be allowed to retake a qualifying exam. The reply was to the effect that they should let her as she was dumb as a box of hair and would never pass anyway. Back and forth they talked about the poor woman, and then ppl started to reply to comment on this. The all employee list had over 10,000 people on it. That poor dumb woman.
On another occasion:
One of my co-workers sent out a message to this all employee list as part of her job, but then requested a red receipt. Boy was her mailbox filled!
I once received an accidental email from the female half of a MT couple. I forget the details now, but it had something to do with the illness of a family member and a thanks for the hospitality during their recent visit to MN. I sent a nice chatty email back expressing sorrow for the illness and a “what a coincidence! I’m from MN, too!” but never heard anything back.
Prior to that I received really cute work email oops - a new gramma bragging up the new grandkid. With pictures! I sent back a “This wasn’t meant for me but congradulations and he’s CUTE!” reply and we chatted for a short bit, but I never actually met her.
Man, I love accidental emails. They’re so much better than real ones could ever be.
One girl ‘outed’ both herself and her girlfriend (also an employee) by accidentally using ‘reply all’ instead of just ‘reply’. She was telling her about a date she had planned for the two of them…
When I started work at Big Corporation, I was put in an orientation class with a bunch of other newbies. At end of class, we set up a mailing list called "lunch’, with the idea that we would use it to set up lunch get-togethers every so often. Approximately once a month we’d get email from some stranger who put “lunch” in the “TO” field instead of the “SUBJECT” field. Often these were pretty steamy emails obviously intended to set up illicit lunch-time rendezvous. I usually replied to the sender, explaining that they’d invited a group of 20 instead of their intended.
A good friend of mine once replied to an email from me with juicy details of her latest encounter with her boyfriend, but instead of replying to just me she accidentally replied to a couple hundred members of an email group we were both in at the time.
Certainly spiced up the email discussions that week!
When I started working at my old job, the production supervisor had the same last name as me, but his first name came later in the alphabet. (Lets call him Joe Bean.) Before I came along, people wanting to send something to Joe Bean could just type in “Bean.” But since “Green Bean” came before “Joe Bean,” once I started there, if you just typed in “Bean,” the email would go to me. Naturally, I received a lot of misdirected emails about production schedules and other boring stuff while people adjusted to the change.
One day, I received an email intended for Joe Bean–nastily wondering if he was pissed off because some new person came along and usurped his place at the top of the list of “Beans!” I just replied exactly the same way as I did to all the other misdirected emails. I replied to the sender and cc’d Joe with a message saying “I received this accidentally. I’ve forwarded a copy to Joe Bean. Thanks.” I got a highly apologetic email back from the sender (and a highly amused email back from Joe.)
My old e-mail address was my first initial, last name and a number at the end.
On New Year’s Eve, my friend w/benefits sent an e-mail basically saying, “Happy New Year, wish I was there to give you a big kiss. XOXOXO” but he forgot to put the number at the end of the e-mail address.
Someone named Bob (I’m a woman, with a name that starts with ‘B’) received the e-mail and was nice enough to respond, saying: “I don’t think you sent this to who you intended to.” My friend then forwarded the whole thing to me. It stuck me as funny (when I imagine Bob initially reading this e-mail from a stranger) and I hope my friend doesn’t mind that I had a giggle at his and Bob’s expense.
I think it was last year at my work place when someone sent out an email regarding handling of a certain customer’s data. This should have been sent just to everyone in the company (and there is a specific distribution list for doing just that) but for some reason the person instead selected every item in our global email address book, which includes email addresses related to many of our customers! :eek:
Remember, this was related to just one specific customer! :smack:
(About five minutes later this person sent an attempt to recall the email.)
My boss screwed the pooch with a “send all” email last year. Our acting department head (her direct boss) had applied to be the permanent department head. He sent an email of criticism about another candidate for the job. She replied that these were good points the rest of us should bring up, but “not from you, since that will look bad.” She then proceeded to send her email to the whole department, including the dean, who had recently been added to the list. Oops. I have never been so amused at work.
I recently did a minor email gaffe, asking one friend how her new anti-depressant is working, but sending the email to a different friend with the same first name. Fortunately, they don’t know each other, so it wasn’t that bad.
One of my good friends at work sent this to the engineering department (about 50 people, thinking he was sending it to a single friend of his:
“Yeah man, come over around 7 … we’re just gonna relax and kick back, throw a movie in and smoke a couple…” :eek:
hehehehe. He immediately ran over to my desk saying “Oh shit! Oh shit, did you just get an email?” Yep, me and 50 other people, amigo.
Nothing really came out of it…It just became a running joke at my workplace.
I run a mailing list for a gaming club. Some people were getting together a Magic draft tournament or something and were organizing the details. One guy said they should get the cards from Store X, who usually had good prices if you special order. Another replied that naw, they should go to Store Y, 'cause Store X often effed up special orders.
And I replied to both of them (privately), reminding them that the owner of Store X was on the list.
Oops! But, while he could have guessed that the owners of one of the area’s gaming stores would be on the list, and technically could have checked the subscriber list, it would be understandable if he didn’t realize or remember.
But, no, they guy responded, “Oh, crap! I knew that. I didn’t realize I was replying to the whole list.”
I knew a married guy who made a habit of having torrid affairs with married co-workers. He was very bright and good at his job, but he could be a real SOB to deal with–not just a tough, hardnosed player, but mean-spirited and nasty when there was no cause.
A few years after we had each left the office where I knew him, he was up for promotion from the regional office in Cleveland to the national New York office of the multinational where he then worked. Then he posted a really steamy e-mail to his latest flame (who had already given up a promotion/transfer to stay near him) on the corporate network, hitting all the salaried employees in Cleveland, ooops, the U.S., oooops, the U.S. and Europe.
His promotion was withdrawn and he was given 60 days to find work elsewhere. (Given his personal habit of attacking other people and the effort it would generally take to set up a “send” to the corporation rather than an individual, there was some speculation that one of the techs whom he had trampled might have arranged for his mail to go where he had not actually directed it, but I was not at that company to get better details.)
At the small ad agency I worked at some years ago, we used some craptacular Mac email program that “featured” big graphics formatted into your email – like a little paper airplane with stamps on it for the default send, and a guy with a quill writing for the reply-to.
Our President was not a computer-savvy guy, and at one point this got him in trouble.
We had received an inquiry from the Red Cross of our metro area about doing some work for them. It came in to me, as it was for interactive work. I replied to it, letting them know our basic capabilities and suggesting we set up a meeting. I copied our Pres and the VP of Account Services, to let them know we had a lead.
So the Pres decides to weigh in and replies “Hey, are we sure we want these folks as a customer? Are they serious, is there really some work here, or is this just them looking for a freebie since they’re a charity organization?”
Reasonable questions… but I look at the large graphic denoting a reply-to-all and think to check the reply-to list, which is hidden under the vast crappy clipart. And yes, it does include the prospective client.
I race upstairs to see if he can unsend it before our local email gateway sends it to our ISP. I was too late, but it was rather fun racing into his office and saying “John, you accidentally emailed the client!”
