# Share your office memo gaffes here! **URL:** \ **Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share\ **Created:** [March 18, 2003, 5:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/share-your-office-memo-gaffes-here/162311 "2003-03-18T17:07:18Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 10\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![trupa](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/aeb1de/32.png) [@trupa](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/trupa)\ **Post date:** [March 21, 2003, 4:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/share-your-office-memo-gaffes-here/162311/41 "2003-03-21T16:53:05Z")
Once wrote back to our VP, copying my entire chain of command up to him, that the prototypes we were eagerly awaiting were "_shitting in sipping"_… Had to put up with wisecracks about “new features” and “should we send out an advisory on these product about this…” for a week. ---
**Author:** ![radar\_ralf](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/b2d939/32.png) [@radar\_ralf](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/radar_ralf)\ **Post date:** [March 22, 2003, 1:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/share-your-office-memo-gaffes-here/162311/42 "2003-03-22T01:19:29Z")
I didn’t write it, but I was once working with a fellow instrument technician as we were installing some new equipment that required some piping connections and fittings. He wrote a note to the lady working the counter at our supply warehouse, “I need to see your nipples. I’ll be back in about an hour, so please have them ready.” I almost hurt myself laughing so hard! ---
**Author:** ![CrankyAsAnOldMan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/crankyasanoldman/32/11670_2.png) [@CrankyAsAnOldMan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CrankyAsAnOldMan)\ **Post date:** [March 22, 2003, 4:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/share-your-office-memo-gaffes-here/162311/43 "2003-03-22T04:33:52Z")
Just this week our Human Resources Division mailed out at least 10,000 postcards to employees advertising their training and workshops. We all got them today. The grabber “graphic” side had a little conversation in quotes, in huge type, with the second line reading: “How Am I Suppose to Do That?” My boss freaked; the rest of us laughed. No one in that entire division caught it? The printer didn’t ask? I mean, we are an institution of higher learning! ---
**Author:** ![Jack\_Batty](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jack_batty/32/3201_2.png) [@Jack\_Batty](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jack_Batty)\ **Post date:** [March 22, 2003, 4:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/share-your-office-memo-gaffes-here/162311/44 "2003-03-22T04:40:40Z")
I had to send an update on something or another to a distribution list, and more than once, instead of starting off with, “Hello everybody,” I’d start it with, “Hell everybody,” Everybody assumed it was more of a Freudian slip than a typo. ---
**Author:** ![quilter](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/q/839c29/32.png) [@quilter](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/quilter)\ **Post date:** [March 22, 2003, 3:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/share-your-office-memo-gaffes-here/162311/45 "2003-03-22T15:24:26Z")
A special edition of my profession’s monthly journal just came out. They run “teasers” above the title, giving a hint of what’s inside. This month’s issue includes Disciplinaary Connections No one thought to run a spell-checker on the cover text?? ---
**Author:** ![AHunter3](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ahunter3/32/368_2.png) [@AHunter3](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AHunter3)\ **Post date:** [March 22, 2003, 6:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/share-your-office-memo-gaffes-here/162311/46 "2003-03-22T18:52:48Z")
You know those perennial “forward this to everyone you know” emails about "Don’t open any emails titled ‘How to Give a Cat a Colonic’ or ‘It Takes Guts to say Jesus’ or ‘Budweiser Frogs Screen saver’ " etc etc etc “because it’s a virus and will erase your hard drive” – ? 'Twas **Ahunter3’s** third week in new employment at th big corporation, working in IT. Already had received three similar emails and had, as was my usual practice, done a reply to all (so as to reach other recipients), put the Snopes link up top, and asked that people refrain from warning everyone about viruses since the IT Department needed people to take authentic virus warnings seriously. Well, this time around I was a bit more blunt in how I worded things: > [@](#): > > Wrong. > > [http://www.snopes.com/inboxer/virus/virus.htm#frog](http://www.snopes.com/inboxer/virus/virus.htm#frog) > As a general rule of thumb, ANY email you get that conjoins a warning about > a virus with the instruction to “forward this to everyone you know” is a) a > hoax and b) is itself a virus, although the kind that infects our email > inboxes, rather than our operating systems and whatnot. > > Now please go unwarn anyone you warned in this fashion to help stop the > spread of “read and pass on”. Well, this time around, the sender was not another one of the secretary-receptionists or QuarkXPress creative jockeys but instead the fucking _ **CFO of the umbrella parent megacorporation that owned our measly little 70-country / 290-office organization as one of many subsidiaries** _. And the distribution list to which he’d forwarded the stupid warning was essentially Everyone Everywhere in All our Subsidiaries. :eek: I got a personal visit from my boss, my boss’s boss, and her boss within 45 minutes, and a passing comment from someone about 4 tiers above that the next day as he passed through the IT Department. ---
**Author:** ![Vortex](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/v/fbc32d/32.png) [@Vortex](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Vortex)\ **Post date:** [March 23, 2003, 5:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/share-your-office-memo-gaffes-here/162311/47 "2003-03-23T17:43:15Z")
My company’s HR department once sent an email informing us who won a gift certificate to the steakhouse accross the street - “Black Anus.” Boy, we had a good laugh over that one. ---
**Author:** ![summerbreeze](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/3bc359/32.png) [@summerbreeze](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/summerbreeze)\ **Post date:** [March 24, 2003, 1:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/share-your-office-memo-gaffes-here/162311/48 "2003-03-24T01:30:33Z")
Our state exec sent a memo to locals asking us to be “in sink” with him. I amended it: I’d rather be in sink than in toilet. ---
**Author:** ![curwin](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/f05b48/32.png) [@curwin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/curwin)\ **Post date:** [March 24, 2003, 2:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/share-your-office-memo-gaffes-here/162311/49 "2003-03-24T14:18:14Z")
I was once on a program in Israel whose initials were “M.M.”. The program got the natural nickname “M&M”. We had a class every morning, and the teacher would start by handing out photocopies of sources we had to study. He would often write a cute line or two on the top. One day, he handed out the sheets, and found all of us (between 10-20 18 year old boys) laughing hysterically. He must have thought that it was his great pun that caused the laughter. He wrote: > [@](#): > > M&M - The only program in Israel that melts in your brain But the photocopier hadn’t copied the entire line. What we read was: > [@](#): > > M&M - The only program in Israel that melts in your bra ---
**Author:** ![Beadalin](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/3be4f8/32.png) [@Beadalin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Beadalin)\ **Post date:** [March 24, 2003, 3:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/share-your-office-memo-gaffes-here/162311/50 "2003-03-24T15:50:33Z")
> [@](#): > > Of course, in our department, we’ll be having Ethnics Training. I’m bringing a few Korean dishes. Should be interesting. Well, **Tibs** , that should be the right class to address certain words in your coworker’s vocabulary (“niglets”, anyone?). I managed to send out a 2MB email to everyone in the company’s US locations (more than 2,000 people). Wow, was that painful. Got many nasty notes and a personal call from IT. I always check filesize before sending now, but darn it, Outlook and Word really don’t work together as well as they advertise they do. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/share-your-office-memo-gaffes-here/162311.md?page=2)