Yesterday I attended an organizational meeting for the local marathon training group. They handed out stacks of promotional flyers to all of us, hoping that we will do a little publicity for them.
Apparently the program is designed for all levels from “coach potatoes” to the experienced runner.
I shit you not. Everyone else in the room was going “well, yeah, but you know what they mean…” Yeah, but it sure as heck doesn’t make us look PROFESSIONAL! Sheesh.
A friend was applying to be a teacher in the local school system and asked me to complete a reference form on his behalf. I competed the form and put it in the addressed, stamped envelope he provided. Just before I tossed it in the mailbox I noticed the address - Gwinnett County Publick Schools. I did fix it before I mailed it out, but not until after givibg said friend a ton of grief!
Mine is well-documented. I am the idiot who got bored and was playing with the Wite-Out and the copier at my office job for a vacuum company. Yes, I sent out the altered copy accidentally. Yes, I am the woman who was fired for sending out memos with the subtitle, “Nothing Sucks Like An Electrolux.”
When I worked for a catalog company, we sold a “plaque” remover. However, in one catalog, as well as on our computer system, it was spelled as “plague” remover.
I pointed it out several times, but no one ever fixed it. I figured, if someone ever sued the company for false advertising, I would be right up there with the person who thought it would help cure the Black Death…
Luckily, this one wasn’t public. It was close to being a public humiliation though.
The Backstory: The #2 Manin our Trade Association had a Beautiful Daughter. Beautiful Daughter, home from college, was working that summer in my department. For some unknown reason, Beautiful Daughter took a shine to me. We ate lunch together, sent “I’m so bored” emails to each other, and flirted like mad. I always stuttered and misspoke around #2 Man. Partly because of what I wanted to do to his daughter, but he was an intimidating presence to everyone.
The Story: One of #2 Man’s underlings was my Mortal Enemy. We were always working at cross-purposes. I’m an editor, and we had definite procedures to follow before a document was published. Mortal Enemy always tried to circumvent procedures, which would have gotten me in deep trouble, but I always caught him. Apparently, several other people disliked him, as he was fired without warning one Friday in July. #2 Man sent an email to the office announcing that Mortal Enemy was no longer an employee, and all questions regarding his duties were to be directed to Some Other Dude.
As you might expect, I was quite pleased that the major thorn in my side was fired. Beautiful Daughter knew my feelings about Mortal Enemy. I clicked a button and sent her an email: “Your dad kicks ass! I’d like to give him a big fat kiss on the mouth for getting rid of Mortal Enemy.” I continued with some other stuff, asked her what she was wearing, and if she wanted to go to lunch that afternoon. Then I hit send and turned my attention to my work.
But something was nagging at the back of my mind. To make it short, I hit the “Reply to Sender” button. I had sent my message to #2 Man instead of Beautiful Daughter. I panicked. My Best Coworker-Friend walked by and said my face looked white. I told her what I had done. She just laughed and went back to her desk. I wrote another email to #2 Man, apologizing like a mad man, saying that I didn’t mean to send the email to him, it was meant for his daughter… and apologizing again. While I was writing the email, I got one from him.
It just said “I don’t think you meant to send this to me.” Quite restrained actually.
The Aftermath: I was too embarrassed to look at #2 Man for several months after that. I made my Best Coworker-Friend do all the work for #2 Man and his department. I told Beautiful Daughter about it at lunch that day and she laughed and laughed. On the way home from work that night she said he said “That guy is a moron.” He would later accuse me (through her) of being a drug addict and “slightly retarded.”
At least I didn’t hit “reply to all”
Yep, I once sat down for a meeting and distributed a document that had, in 24 point type in the front cover, “Town Name Pubic Schools”.
They were nice about it.
On a semi-related note, I spent this week reviewing job applications, which included college transcripts. One college had thrown some weird internal coding on the front of the transcript classes, so that one read:
“(f)Art Appreciation - B”
I sooo wanted to copy that and send it to the applicant’s husband, who was a buddy of mine in high school. Can you imagine having information like that on a spouse?
I did come into the office one day and found someone had fallen for that net-legend about Microsoft paying you some cash for each person you forward the email to…
He forwarded it to everyone in the company.
I myself did npot notice an error before publication, amnd found my boss used to work in Neverland, instead of the Netherlands.
Oops :o
One of our dear HR people sent out an e-mail to everyone in the compnay, reading in part:
This year Thanksgiving, Christmas Day, and New Years Day are all on Wendsdays. I wonder how often that happens.
What can you say? Thanksgiving wasn’t on a Wendsday. Not being on a Wendsday is actually a defining characteristic of Thanksgiving. Christmas and New Years of course are seven days apart, and will be on the same day of the week every year.
But maybe HR people just have problems with the concept of “weeks.” Before I started there a different HR person called to check what starting date I wanted. I told him either the 3rd or the 10th. He suggested the 10th, since that was a Monday. If you’ve been following along, they’re both Mondays.
Hal
My company moved into a new office building four years ago. The entire company is on the first floor. Because of this, I have only been on the elevator once and I doubt anyone else has used it much either. Everyone in my company received an email memo last Monday informing us that one of the elevators would be out of service most of the week and they apologize for the inconvenience.
I worked at a large media company writing copy for one of their retail websites. The CEO of our company was always bringing in annoying stuffed shirts with expensive watches and even more expensive hairpieces to tell us how we should be writing. They were always changing the style and it was always bad.
The copywriting department (all three of us) were really annoyed and the CEO sent us an email thanking us for our hard work and said that even though she could never do our jobs as well as we did, she’s always be around to help if we ever needed anything. Of course I had to forward some snarky comment to my co-worker. I sent her an email that said something to the effect of “Christ, can that woman lay a guilt trip or what?! I’m glad she’s not my mother, I couldn’t handle it!”
Turns out I hit “Reply” instead of “Forward”.
It was very bad and I could have been fired, but a good friend of mine was a VP and got it all smoothed over. Still, the CEO wouldn’t look at me until our company finally closed a couple of months later. Now I cut and paste my snarky comments into a new email.
My favorite is the time the HR lady sent out a memo to the whole company that accidentally contained a list of everyone’s salary and stock options. It was lunchtime, so all of the managers were running around to people’s desks trying to delete the email before we got back. Some people managed to save it and the company was never the same after it got passed around.
The company I started working for in 2001 (my first job out of college), had sent out a 2001 calendar to all of their customers, sales reps, and home office empolyees. Unfortunately, all of these calendars had an entry for Sunday, June 31st.
I’m not sure anyone else noticed until I pointed it out to my boss.
I’m in Illinois and the Governor recently said that all state employees would have ethics training.
Of course, in our department, we’ll be having Ethnics Training. I’m bringing a few Korean dishes. Should be interesting.
Tibs.
Well, one could argue that the sales guy was terribly careless. I’m glad that your employer was more understanding, though.
Not really public but amusing nontheless. A friend of mine works for a rather large “giftware” (read knick-knacks) company here in NJ and has a pretty good friend in the HR department. During the Christmas rush they were in need of a lot of extra help in the warehouse and were taking in applications left and right. My friend came home one day with a fax in his hand that was a copy of some poor schmoe’s application. It seemed his last job was working at a soup factory and his made job was the deconstruction of the chicken carcasses…his position as written on the applicaition? “Breast Puller” 
Needless to say they didnt hire him…
It will if you remove “pubic” from the spellcheck dictionary, which is something I do the very first day at every new job. 
(Assuming, of course, that you never type “pubic” in your ordinary line of work. Or, if you do, you’re willing to put up with it squiggly-underlined.)
I had a manager who would go around handing out memos to every employee, saying “I think you’ll find this to be self-exclamatory.” Try repressing that laugh, just try. What made it worse is you’d hear her coming, saying it over and over.
There was a guy who had to leave the office to make a trip over to a local company called “Graybar”. He left a note on his desk saying “Went to Gaybar”. Needless to say it was passed around the office quickly and mercilessly in the time he was gone.
Gee, you say that as if we told the boss what happened…
Sigmundex, I’m from Springfield, Illinois and just the other day was passing Graybar and my co-worker and I giggled at how close it was to Gaybar.
Not a memo as such, but I did get a very amusing mailshot once that went like this:
Dear Null
Are you tired of paying inflated prices for Null and Null?, here are a few of our amazing offers:
(((Complete absence of any such offers)))
We hope to hear from you soon.
Two emails I sent recently.