Another thread details office-memo gaffes, and a few have involved e-mail slipups, an increasing danger of the new century. Care to share yours?
Mine is not so much “hilarious” as “enlightening.” I am copy chief at a magazine. Despite the fact that I have 20 years as a writer and editor under my belt, they always brush off and ignore my storyand interview ideas. About two years ago, I e’d one to Editor 1. She e’d Editor 2, “Why doesn’t Eve leave us alone with her stupid ideas? Hasn’t anyone told her we don’t care what she thinks?” And of course she accidentally hit “reply” instead of “forward.”
Well, it was interesting to see in black-and-white what I’d always suspected. Me, I never e anything to anyone that I couldn’t acidentally send to the president of the company.
A friend of mine, a college professor, told me a few days ago he had accidently forwarded a spam about Viagra to one of his female graduate students. Fortunately for him, she believed his explanation.
I’m sorry you had to see that, Eve, although it’s best to know the truth, I guess. Assholes. Did you ever tell them that you were on to them?
I once thought I had forwarded an email from a fellow wine lover to Mr. Pug, but I had accidentally hit “reply.” I referred to my friend in the email as “my wino friend.” Luckily for me, she belonged to a club called “The Winos,” so my butt was covered (I hope).
My cousin Sara is living with my sister, Jess.
Yes, a bad thing all around.
They’ve been there for about a year, and I would not be surprised to see blood at this point. They both have young sons, and entirely different ideas about mothering.
Last week Sara accidentally sent Jess an e-mail saying how she would be so glad to be out, but she didn’t know if she was going to tell Jessr that she was leaving, because it would be so funny to see her try to scrape together the rent for the next month with no warning.
My sister forwarded to me, saying that she was just so happy that Sara was finally going to be moving that she didn’t even care.
Yes, A very macho person Mr. TT ,accidentally sent a very humbling apology to a co=worker whom he didn’t care for. It was intended for a family member, little Miss TT.
The manager of our testing lab sent an email to all employees that we would be having visitors (VPs or customers, don’t remember which), and that we should “remove all trash from the lab.”
Thinking myself a wit, I decide to forward the message to a buddy I worked with saying “I guess we need to get Dana out of the lab!” Dana was a young woman in our group with a bit of a loose reputation.
After I hit the SEND button, I realized that I didn’t type my buddy’s address in the TO: field. Since the message didn’t bounce, I knew there was only two possibilities:
I hit REPLY intead of FORWARD, in which case my slandering of the co-worker went to the lab manager. Not Good.
I hit REPLY-TO-ALL, in which my comment went to every employee on the site. WAY BAD. END OF EMPLOYMENT BAD.
Once I realized the latter possibility, I could feel the blood drain out of my face. This was before I knew about the recall-message function, but that never recalls all the messages anyway.
I ran to lab manager’s office, and was relieved to see I only hit “REPLY” He even let me delete the message without him seeing it.
If I had simply hit a different button that day, I would have been fired.
A programmer at a company I used to work for sent an email out to his manager explaining how he wouldn’t have time to complete the project he’d been assigned because of another problem he’d been working on. He included a screen shot to better describe the very complicated problem he’d been trying to fix. The screen shot showed the task bar chock-full of active IM chat sessions, a Yahoo Chat room, and a Blackjack game.
He wasn’t fired but he was reprimanded, all computer games removed from his computer and Internet access logs for his machine were routed to his manager every day.
I had a student email me in the fall, asking when a workshop he needed to take was offered. I emailed him back and included the URL for the workshop signup page. Or so I thought…
I actually sent him to a very off color Halloween e-card my parents had sent that showed a mooning Vampire, while “Blue Moon” played in the background, a site I’d visited over 24 hours before.
I still don’t know what I did while cutting & pasting that resurrected that old URL.
I worked at a place as a temp. Someone was raggin’ about a co-worker, calling her a bitch, stupid, blah, blah, blah. She hit the “broadcast” button and it went to all 1,000 employees. Followed by a broadcast apology. I don’t know if they canned her or not, but I nearly cried of embarrassment for her.
I love these stories! It’s modern horror at it’s best! Someone should put a book of them together and there should be a copy in every bathroom of every office.
revtim, I know that exact “no-blood-in-my-face” feeling. I posted in the other thread Eve mentioned. It was about the time I sent a co-worker an email about our CEO saying “Man, can she lay a guilt trip or what?! I’m glad she’s not my mother, I couldn’t handle it!” Unfortunately I sent it to the CEO instead of the co-worker. I didn’t know that all my organs could slip into my ankles like that.
Another time (at the same job) the office know-it-all was hitting on this girl who happened to have the same first name as me (imagine, two DeskMonkeys in one office!) and the funniest last name. I wish I could tell it to you, but I won’t. It sounded like a melty ice-cream cone hitting the sidewalk, so we’ll call her “Splat.” His wooing was pitiful, but entertaining. Once day, this guy sends me an email just saying hi and asking about my day. Now, I’ve had casual conversations with the guy and it was a friendly, laid back crew. Being an idiot, I totally forgot about the other girl because we referred to her as “Splat”, not her first name. I figured he was reaching out, being nice, making friends, maybe looking for my opinion on the whole Splat thing. What was I going do, shun him? So I sent him a friendly email back. I do love to chit chat, so we emailed back and forth for a day or two and at one point he said something to the effect of “wow, I didn’t realize just how cool you were until now!”
Well, I finally figured it out when he made some identifying comment in an email (which I forget) so I stood up in my cube, looked into his office which was maybe 20 feet away. He looked up and saw me and I said with a huge grin “I’m not SPLAT, you dork!” The poor guy. His face practically fell off his head. Normally I wouldn’t have been so delighted to do it, but this guy could be such a blowhard, you all would have enjoyed that moment as much as I did. He dragged me into his office and begged me not to tell anyone, and like a good co-worker, I told that story to everyone in the office until I was hoarse, and still they all begged me to tell it just one more time! I managed to choke it out a few more times.
A few years ago, a co-worker of mine asked me if I wanted to share an apartment with him to cut down on expenses. Before I made my decision, he and I had a long discussion about the fact I am gay and he is straight, just to make sure this wouldn’t be a problem somewhere down the road. We decided it was a non-issue, and I started preparing to move in.
The following week, I was at work when he called me on his cell to ask me to print out a document off his 'puter for him. I wasn’t sure what he filed it under, so I clicked on different documents, when suddenly a long , chatty letter about ME came up. He had written it (but never completed it)
In it, he described me as “weird, but harmless” which made me laugh, but even better was when he discussed his plan to look “slovenly” when at home, since he knows I don’t go for dishevelved looking guys. He also wrote that he hoped I found him unattractive.
After moving in with him, I commented to him one day-"Ya know, I usually don’t like guys in ratty teeshirts and jeans, but you look MAH-VELOUS ! "
The look on his face was priceless, and it took awhile to convince him I was kidding.
Oh, I immediately went to Editor 1 and said, “ummm, I think you meant to e that to Liz, not to me.” She was totally unapologetic. Happily she was leaving in two weeks, anyway.
Second horor tales: I was supposed to have dinner with a Rather Famous Playwright and his Boyfriend. Boyfriend wrote a very snarky e-mail making Unpleasant Remarks about my private life, and somehow sent it to me by mistake. I found I had “other plans” for that night, and never did dine with them. I might add that, had Boyfriend simply said “oops” and apologized, I’d have forgotten all about it.
I went to see a female co-worker of mine but she was out of the office. Another co-worker (male) said that she made a quick run to the drug store. I said, “Female ran to drug store in the middle of the afternoon…clearly, she needed tampons!” He laughed at me and I went back to my desk. Well, he told the female co-worker what I had said. Turns out, she ran over there and got some chocolate covered peanuts. So when she got back to her office and heard that I’d been speculating that she went to get tampons, she laughed and e-mailed me, “Want to come over and eat some of my tampons?” as a way of offering some chocolate covered peanuts.
I thought I’d just freak her out and print out the e-mail for fun. I hit the print button and then went into the copy room to grab it. I walked in - and the printer was GONE. All of our copy jobs had been re-routed up to the Director’s office. I almost passed out. I went and told my co-workers and we laughed our asses off and managed to stop the print job from the computer before it materialized upstairs.
Are you suuuure? Are you reaaalllly sure? Because every time I try to cancel a print job, it never works. Eh, maybe it’s just MY printer. Or is it . . .?
:dubious:
Eve, that sucks that you’ve been on the receiving end of the EMFUs (E-Mail F**k Ups). What is it like when you open them? I always wondered what went through the CEO’s mind when she got the one I sent. I felt really bad. She never, ever mentioned it to me, but everyone knew about it.
A previous email system that we used had one way to email people within the company and a different way for an outside “Internet” email address. You selected “Internet” as the recipient, then you got another window or something in which you typed the email address. OK.
Well, one chap got an “adult oriented” photo of a young lady (so to speak) Arbuckling a vodka bottle. He thought he’d send it to his outside friends.
Apparently, he typed [INTER] in the address, expecting it to bring up the window for an outside Internet address.
However, when he hit the <Enter> key, it selected the first thing with [INTER] and emailed it. . . to our corporate “Internal Auditing” department.
I had a one-night affair with a friend of mine’s girlfriend while she and I were both drunk. A couple of days later I sent her an e-mail to discuss a few things (it isn’t right, you’re smokin’ but you’re dating so-and-so, it isn’t fair to them, etc. and so forth.)
Turns out he made a habit of regularly checking her email (a fact neither of us knew) - he confronted me the next day. :smack:
Needless to say, he still hasn’t spoken to me.
Also needless to say, is electronic communication with someone you’re not supposed to be “involved” with is a big no-no.
