Today at work I sent that video of the drunk baby to a coworker named Anne. Except I really sent it to one of the higher ups named Ann. Ok, not a huge mistake, so I send them both a message saying “oops, meant to send this to Anne”. Sent it off and for some reason I clicked the link that I sent by mistake to Ann.
It wasn’t the drunken baby video. It was an add for Viagra. I sent one of my bosses a viagra add by mistake.
The next thing is me running down the hall to Ann’s office to explain. She was already laughing at the viagra add.
It could have been a lot worse but I sure learned my lesson to double check who I’m sending an email to!
I once forwarded a resume to my boss, explaining that of the three resumes I’d selected for us to interview together later in the day, this was the one that seemed most promising and therefore I’d scheduled it first as it might save a little of her time.
He did represent himself very well at the interview, too… so amiable and confident… (We still laugh about how I’d inadvertently sent that e-mail to him.)
A few years back, the PA to one of the bosses inadvertently sent a spreadsheet detailing senior staff’s salaries with comments to the entire company. Two minutes later she came flying out of her office, calling out “Don’t open that e-mail”!
IIrc, Lotus Notes had a “Send to All” option right next to the “Send” option. :rolleyes:
Yeah, you wouldn’t want to separate “slap on the wrist” option from “global nuclear meltdown” option on the computer screen (thinking about the dozens of times I’ve hit “print” on a five billion page document instead of “save” because they were right next to each other).
In our social group there are a couple of people that I can’t stand, and I sometimes comment about them to my husband via email - I check very, very carefully before sending those emails off - it would be just like me, too, to send them to the people I’m talking about instead of my husband.
Yeah - I made a rule of no sarcasm (or very little) in e-mails, and no chain mails or forwards anything like that at work. And I still have been almost caught, forwarding on other people’s e-mails that have snarky comments. People don’t realize how easy e-mail is to mis-read under the best of circumstances!
Years ago I was at a job and taking a break, when I heard a couple of IT guys talking. “She asked if there was any way I could pull the e-mail back, but I said no, once it’s sent it’s sent.”
I had no idea what they were talking about.
When I got back to my desk, I found an e-mail from some woman addressed to another woman. In it, she complained about what a loser her boss was, and how horrible his toupe looked, and how he probably couldn’t get it up. It went on and on.
I was the receiving end once on an email screwup where I was the insulted subject AND the unintended recipient. That was a clarifying day, learning in the blink of an eye that at least 2 friends weren’t my friends at all but rather they amused themselves at my expense. Worse for them was that the sender shared my front cubicle wall and the intended recipient shared my right cubicle wall. All I had to do was stand up and face the sender w/ a shocked, hurt look and she knew what she’d done.
A few weeks ago when I was sick (I work from home so I can safely work while sick), I got an email from a guy named Anthony. I’d never heard from him before, but he’s a client of a client. He emailed asking me to bill them directly instead of billing my client (this was approved by my client). I replied to him saying that’d be fine.
A little while later I wrote a wrap-up of a big project, and sent it to my other client, who also is named Anthony. I just typed “ant…” in the TO field and Eudora filled in the rest.
A couple days later I was a little miffed at why Anthony didn’t respond to my wrap-up. I had questions in there and stuff.
Then I got an email from my client from the first paragraph. (I just realized HE is Anthony too. Only he goes by Tony, thank Og) He sent me a forward from his client, Anthony, with a PDF attached.
The PDF was a printout of my mis-sent email, on it was written “I don’t know what this is?” He sent the PDF to Tony and typed “What is this?” Then Tony forwarded it to me, just saying “Hey I think you sent this to the wrong person.”
Anyway the point of my story is that this guy got an email he didn’t recognize, printed it out, wrote on it, scanned it to PDF and sent the PDF to someone who is basically a 3rd party to ask “What is this?” Instead of just ignoring or replying to the original goof.
I would have been happy going to my grave never realizing they weren’t truly my friends; all they suffered was some embarrassment, it wasn’t as if they actually lost anything since they didn’t care about me in the first place. I’m not the type to get my co-workers in trouble over junior high-style mischief unless it affects my job which this didn’t.
You raise a good point, Chucka - is it better to know who you’re really dealing with, or keep on thinking something that isn’t true (but doesn’t hurt you to not know)? I think I’d prefer to know that acquaintances weren’t actually friends, but I can certainly see your point. I wouldn’t bother trying to get them in trouble, either - I don’t think personal insults at work count (except maybe for a hostile work environment claim).
Years ago, I was working at a company where there were just two of us foreigners. I thought other guy and I were friends. One day I went to get something from the printer and he had printed out a letter he was going to send to his mother, and it was all about me and the things he hated about working with me.
An interesting read. After I was finished, I dropped it off on his desk. He first looked up with a “Thanks” and then his face turned white when he realized what I had just read. I told him he should be quicker at picking up his stuff quicker if he was going to write things like that.
He did handle it well. He came by and apologized, said he was blowing off steam.
We had the credit manager of a hotel email her resume and application for another company to EVERYONE on the hotel’s global list. Which means it went worldwide. Fortunately she got the job and left within a month.
I also got an email from the controller which for some reason had the Excel attachment with everyone’s salary on it. Funny about that was I knew what everyone made already (I did the payroll) and I was the only one who actually even opened his email. Shows how important his memos were regarded eh? We were able to recall that one without any damage.
