A few years ago my company adopted an evaluation system that involves all of us commenting on each of the others, and which is automated by a Lotus Notes application we had written for us. The application is supposed to allow us to submit our evaluation packages to HR but noplace else. The first year we did this, some of the completed packages got distributed to all the people being evaluated, rather than HR. Nobody was aver able to figure out what went wrong, so they announced that the problem had been solved.
And you didn’t follow up? Some people miss all their chances to do bad things.
“Yes! Of course I love you! Why don’t you remember last week?”
I have two ugly, mis-directed email stories, neither of which was the result of one of my emails, but both involving me.
The first was back in 2000. My assistant was helping another VP out with a project organizing staff for a massive test of our new web-based system. My boss, the president, had sent out an email to everyone telling them that they had to participate and to fill out a test sheet and forward it to my assistant. One of the sales staff sent a very pompous email to my assistant explaining that she was far too busy to be doing anything like the required testing. Annoyed, my assistant forwarded the email to the VP she was working with, with the comment “No wonder she never gets laid.” You can see where this is going.
She accidentally replied instead of forwarding.
Needless to say, there was a big drama, which involved me having to let my assistant go.
The second errant email was when I was in Tokyo. The woman I was dating at the time had a tendency to drink a lot on occasion. One Friday, shortly after she had returned from few days in Shanghai at her cousin’s wedding, I got an email from her on my cell phone. It was clearly intended for David, her ex-boyfriend, because it discussed how much she had enjoyed being with him again in China, and asking when was he coming back to Tokyo. Things ended in a pretty ugly manner after that.
Receiving end:
Got an email early one morning from a customer 2,000 miles away that I’ve never met in person. She was sending an email to her sister - she thought - with lots of gross intimate personal details about some female health issues she was having.
About 30 seconds after opening it, there was an attempt to recall it. About 30 seconds after that the phone rang. I assured her that I deleted it after seeing it addressed to Dear Sally. She didn’t r-e-a-l-l-y believe me but there wasn’t much either of us could do except pretend I was telling the truth.
We still talk once a month or so on business and we never have referred to the email again.
When my husband and I were in college, we and our friends went through an “insult each other in degrading and shocking ways over email” phase. So it wasn’t uncommon to write some really offensive stuff. I don’t know why we thought this was so funny, or why we thought someone on the “outside” of our circle wouldn’t overhear/over-read something someday and get the wrong idea. We were really stupid about it…it’s completely embarrassing to think about now.
So one day, a guy friend writes us with an amusing story about something that happened to him. My husband writes back, dissecting it in minute detail…it ends up looking like some foul rant you’d see in the Pit. At the end, he tells our friend to, and I quote, “go shove a fountain pen up your ass and discharge the ink cartridge, you squid-raping homo-probe.”
Yeah.
Our friend thought this was hilarious, and responded in kind. Our friend’s MOM, who was included in the “reply-all,” DIDN’T. So my husband got the bitchiest, most totally deserved email ever. He was absolutely mortified and wrote an apology letter to the guy’s mom, but she never wrot back. I think he still feels bad about it.
OMG. I’ve never done it with Email, but I did it with a webcast meeting.
A guy was doing a train-the-trainer thing for me, which would cascade down to technicians all over the planet.
This guy, nice as he may be, is the type of trainer that performs a deadpan reading rather than sort of ad-libbing in order to maintain his audience’s attention.
After two hours of it, we ended our session, but I forgot to unshare my screen. Immediately, I get on a chat window and proceed to tell my friend how utterly boooooooring this guy is, and blah, blah, blah.
Suddenly, another chat window opens, and it’s him. “Um…I’m still here and you didn’t close the meeting.”
I could have died. We’re ok but I was horribly embarrassed.
I worked at a company of a few hundred people. Someone was pissed off at the manager and sent her friend a seething, hateful email that was so filthy it almost self-ignited.
and she accidentally hit “Broadcast”. Every person in the company got it.
I once received an e-mail from an employee here that I had no interaction with. He had recently gotten married, and felt fit to share his wedding photos with everyone in the company.
I was glad he was happy, but it was a bit surreal.
No personal anecdotes to share, but I do want to share the very funny website wrongkmiller, the blog of a fella named K Miller whose eponymous gmail address gets a lot of mis-addressed mail, which he shares with the world.
About 10 years ago, we were using Novell for our network. There was a little application we discovered called (as best as I can remember) netmsg. If you typed that at the DOS prompt (yeah, 10 years ago) it would let you see who was logged into the network, and you could send them a brief message (either 32 or 64 characters, I think). Or you could select multiple users. Or you could select all.
One day a message popped up on everyone’s screen: “He loves me because I swallow.” It was prairie dog city for awhile with everyone jumping up asking “Did you just get a message?” Then, about 5 minutes later an apology “Sorry, I didn’t mean to send that to everyone.” It got to the point where a manager asked the IT person whether he could find out who sent it, but (God bless him) he said that there was really no way to do it.
The culprits were never revealed until after they left the company. They turned out to be two women, both engaged to be married and taking wedding conversation to interesting lengths.
I had one of the most embarrassing kinds of email mixups way back when I first started chatting online. I had been flirting with someone in a Gay PA chat room, and I sent certain…photos. Unfortunately, I hadn’t noticed that his email address was xxxxxxx1@blahblah.net. So I sent them to xxxxxx@blahblah.net.
And 10 minutes later got a horrified reply by some (apparently) middle-aged lady telling me never to send her anything ever again and if I did she was going to call her ISP to try to get me arrested. Oh. My. God. I have never felt that ball of pure ice in the middle of my stomach quite that badly since. HORRIBLY embarrassed over that…
And I’m VERY careful to double-check my email addresses now.
The ONE time I sent a naked pic of myself to my then GF; I sent it to the wrong person.
After I realized what I had done I was horrified. I can’t remember the E-mail address but I DO remember thinking at the time that this particular address is something most likely a kid would have made up.
It was AOL too, so I would have known immediately if it was an unused address.
I swore to the internet Gods that night that if they would just keep the FBI from busting down my door, I’d never do that shit again.
(And I haven’t)