# Dear Cow-Orker: before you click "send"... **URL:** \ **Category:** The BBQ Pit\ **Created:** [August 21, 2007, 7:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dear-cow-orker-before-you-click-send/416410 "2007-08-21T19:30:12Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 11\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![OtakuLoki](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/ac8455/32.png) [@OtakuLoki](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/OtakuLoki)\ **Post date:** [August 23, 2007, 4:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dear-cow-orker-before-you-click-send/416410/21 "2007-08-23T04:37:07Z")
**Electrical Storm** , thanks for the cow-orker goodness. I love how she’s asking for the meeting AFTER spewing her bile as far as possible, too. How to make people want to cooperate with you, too. ---
**Author:** ![garius](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/e19b73/32.png) [@garius](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/garius)\ **Post date:** [August 23, 2007, 12:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dear-cow-orker-before-you-click-send/416410/22 "2007-08-23T12:42:21Z")
> [@](#): > > garius, I’ll bite. What’s a “Two Can Van-Damme”? **acsenray** nailed it. Someone (nearly always male\*) who turns into a belligerent idiot after two pints and starts causing trouble either with some poor innocent sod half their size or the nearest bloke _twice_ their size who works on the door. Interestingly middle-managers who send emails like this tend to turn out to be Van-Dammes quite frequently as well. \*The female variety tend to manifest as “Two Dram Madams” - women who flirt outrageously and inappropriately with whatever unsuspecting men are unlucky enough to wander into range. Or, if its the Office Party, the man whose “rank” is most diametrically opposed to their own - the CEO if they’re an Admin Assistant, the mailroom boy if they’re a Company Director. ---
**Author:** ![Rebo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/rebo/32/13005_2.png) [@Rebo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rebo)\ **Post date:** [August 23, 2007, 1:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dear-cow-orker-before-you-click-send/416410/23 "2007-08-23T13:05:15Z")
Yes, thank you! Quite entertaining. 😃 ---
**Author:** ![Harmonious\_Discord](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/74df32/32.png) [@Harmonious\_Discord](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Harmonious_Discord)\ **Post date:** [August 23, 2007, 2:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dear-cow-orker-before-you-click-send/416410/24 "2007-08-23T14:19:25Z")
I get so sick of people disparaging our cows all the time by comparing them to their workmates. Knock it off already. ---
**Author:** ![gigi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/a587f6/32.png) [@gigi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gigi)\ **Post date:** [August 23, 2007, 9:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dear-cow-orker-before-you-click-send/416410/25 "2007-08-23T21:21:42Z")
[QUOTE=Electrical Storm] although Jane (her underling) will need to rework a large chink of it. [/QUOTE] All that and a racial slur too! 😉 Wow, that was cringeworthy. And yeah, it won’t be forgotten anytime soon. ---
**Author:** ![potato\_pan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/43a26b/32.png) [@potato\_pan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/potato_pan)\ **Post date:** [August 23, 2007, 11:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dear-cow-orker-before-you-click-send/416410/26 "2007-08-23T23:39:28Z")
ha ha I’d like if you could clue us into her email so that we could all ask her when the meeting is going to be. Sounds to me like she’ll be gone soon. In my company she’d have six months, at most, to live. I love real-life work stories! Thanks. ---
**Author:** ![potato\_pan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/43a26b/32.png) [@potato\_pan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/potato_pan)\ **Post date:** [August 23, 2007, 11:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dear-cow-orker-before-you-click-send/416410/27 "2007-08-23T23:41:22Z")
O-at my company, it’s popular is to print out the email, make grammatical corrections, and pass it around. It never fails to humiliate… ---
**Author:** ![Electrical\_Storm](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/ac8455/32.png) [@Electrical\_Storm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Electrical_Storm)\ **Post date:** [August 23, 2007, 11:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dear-cow-orker-before-you-click-send/416410/28 "2007-08-23T23:42:56Z")
I was wondering if anyone else had picked up on that. I zeroed in on it but never said anything. Yeah, it’s definitely cringeworthy, even if it was a genuine typo. I once sent out an e-mail years ago with the word “shit” in it instead of “shift”. Luckily it wasn’t going to anyone but a few friendly cow-orkers - and they were quick to pounce. 😛 ---
**Author:** ![gigi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/a587f6/32.png) [@gigi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gigi)\ **Post date:** [August 24, 2007, 1:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dear-cow-orker-before-you-click-send/416410/29 "2007-08-24T13:30:57Z")
[QUOTE=potato pan] O-at my company, it’s popular is to print out the email, make grammatical corrections, and pass it around. It never fails to humiliate.. [/QUOTE] I tried that but my head starting spinning from the rabid mix of metaphors. ---
**Author:** ![RTFirefly](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/c77e96/32.png) [@RTFirefly](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RTFirefly)\ **Post date:** [August 24, 2007, 4:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dear-cow-orker-before-you-click-send/416410/30 "2007-08-24T16:02:28Z")
[QUOTE=Sublight] Your agency (in charge of writing) had been nothing but rude, condescending and presumptuous to mine (in charge of editing and design), culminating in a hissy-fit (the week before this incident) in which your boss announced that we had no right to tamper with your literary craftsmanship, and that your agency would henceforth be sending articles directly to the client without our input. The offending article was the first product of your new policy, and in your effort to claim as much credit for yourselves as possible, you relegated us to BCC status when sending it in, so nobody would think we’d had any input into it. In retrospect, that was nice of you. We’d like to thank you for the spectacle. The fireworks were quite pleasant to watch from our vantage point. And we most certainly enjoyed being awarded contracts for _both_ halves of the work the following year. [/QUOTE] Sweet. Sweet indeed. 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![ENugent](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/4af34b/32.png) [@ENugent](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ENugent)\ **Post date:** [August 24, 2007, 6:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dear-cow-orker-before-you-click-send/416410/31 "2007-08-24T18:14:44Z")
[QUOTE=Electrical Storm] I once sent out an e-mail years ago with the word “shit” in it instead of “shift”. Luckily it wasn’t going to anyone but a few friendly cow-orkers - and they were quick to pounce. 😛 [/QUOTE] This is an old story, but… An associate at my old firm was often heard to brag about how good he was at spotting typos. He claimed that they “floated above the page” when he looked at them. He was working frantically to finish a memo on a patent interference for a very senior litigation partner, one of only a couple of female partners at the firm at the time. The subject line of the memo was “The Count of the Interference.” Since it was late, he printed out two copies, and without looking at the first one, gave it to his secretary to run over to the partner’s office. Then he looked down at his copy, and saw that he had left the ‘o’ out of “count” in the subject line. He managed to catch his secretary before she actually handed the document to the partner, but it was a very close thing. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dear-cow-orker-before-you-click-send/416410.md?page=1)