Most ridiculous company-wide emails received?

[ShirleyPhallus]

Had a few gold ones in the last few weeks including:

• making sure for everyone to rinse out their mugs before they go in the kitchen with accompanying photos of dirty mugs (just in case you didn’t know what one looked like)

• obligatory “has someone lost a pass we found it in the ladies toilet” email which then transpires belongs to someone who was in a cubicle at the time and hadn’t actually lost it

• the very predictable phantom pooer which is shrouded in a very polite email asking “colleagues to respect our washroom facilities and use a brush and flush approach”

Anyone got any good ones?

Yep. The usual ones about missing cutlery. Surely people are too busy to worry about a missing knife/fork/spoon?

We had a really stern email about a "cutlery audit" that sent me into a cold sweat because I have a terrible habit of putting my used fork into my lunchbox and taking it home. If you look in my cutlery drawer right now I am sure there will be a fork from the work kitchen in there. The forks do all make it back to work eventually but I felt so guilty when that email arrived.

I don't understand why people poo at work at all!

Not so much ridiculous emails, but our manager will send out an email to all staff about something, say, a meeting that's happening the next day... then most people in the email will hit reply all saying whether or not they can go - it drives me mad - IT DOESN'T NEED TO BE A REPLY ALL!!!

If I’m at work and need a poo I’m going to go. I’d rather not but I can’t hold it in for six hours or so.

I don't understand why people poo at work at all!

Any number of chronic gastro issues. Normal nature calling. Hormones. By no means an exhaustive list. I mean, if you've gotta go you've gotta go.

I don't understand why that needs explaining to anyone, really.

In my place we were told that we couldn't send site wide emails for anything charity related. Until the HR director started fundraising and broke their own rule.

When it comes to "reply all" there are a few repeat offenders.

In an old job emails containing bolding, underlining and coloured text were sent out frequently, simply because management were staggeringly bad at managing staff. Threatening disciplinary action by mass email was their way of communicating normal stuff.

"I don't understand why that needs explaining to anyone, really"

I didn't need it explained - you took it upon yourself to do so

I get real stage fright if I'm anywhere that isn't at home - it's a dire situation if I have to go at work - so I always find it strange when people are able just to let it go in a public place. Pretty sure that didn't need explaining either but here we are....

This is semi outing, but worked somewhere where we could get “taste cards” as a company benefit. It got taken in say April for about £30. Anyway one year we got an email 2 days before the Christmas payday - “we accidentally haven’t taken your taste card payment this year, so it’s been deducted from this months pay”.... there was outrage !

I didn't need it explained - you took it upon yourself to do so

So you do understand then. Someone with diverticulitis or common IBS doesn't have a choice despite any 'stage fright' they may have.

Company wide email because someones nestcafe azera had gone missing.

I remember once we were informed we all had to log out of outlook, for some kind of update. Our document management system was run out of outlook and we also couldn’t action client requests if we couldn’t see the emails, so we couldn’t do anything except sit and twiddle our thumbs until the update was done. This was before email access on phones were a thing as well. Eventually after about half an hour someone decided to phone IT for an update - turned out it had been available for us to log back on for about twenty minutes. We all log back on to see an email headed “you can log back on to outlook now” 🤦🏼‍♀️
And we couldn’t get the guy who sent it to understand why it hadn’t been a very good plan!

My friend used to be responsible for sending out phishing emails and logging who clicked links etc. It is a very serious thing in our firm, online security is drilled into all staff. He would come up with a few phishing email every few weeks.

At the pub one night he mentions he's running out of creative phishing email ideas. We tell him to send one titled THIS IS A PHISHING EMAIL, DO NOT CLICK ON THE LINK with warnings written everywhere etc

Still had loads of people click the link

Head of department who used to email reminders of deadlines eberyone was fly aware of ahead of the deadline, so you felt you should have got whatever it was to her early and were being scolded. I would have understood if I had ever missed one. I hadn't.

Used to work for civil service in quite a large dept. Our director was quite involved and regularly walked around interacting with us. I remember two emails sticking out;

1. (My favourite) - he emailed us telling us that the correct response to being asked how you are is 'I am well' and not 'ok/good' etc.

1. Someone reported their lunch stolen to him, and he emailed us all telling us that it had been a particularly expensive lunch and that the thief should reimburse the lunchless person or otherwise face disciplinary action (somehow).

I miss him!

I get real stage fright if I'm anywhere that isn't at home - it's a dire situation if I have to go at work - so I always find it strange when people are able just to let it go in a public place

I always find it strange when people get all weird about where they go and expect others to have predictable bowels that fit in with when they are at home so they don't need to poo at work, at other people's houses, when out and about etc.

I have no idea about the bowel habits of anyone else but I would assume that it would be quite rare to be so regular that you rarely need to go when not at home.

There was a thread about needing to do a wilderness poo not so long ago and the number of people who couldn't get their heads round how people who were unable to 'simply wait several hours to find a toilet' was astonishing and if they were out running or hiking in the fells might find a secluded place to do a poo and needing to do this occasionally did not mean that they had a medical issue.

“When you’ve gotta go, you’ve gotta go”🥺

I don’t have any, but bumping hoping for more!

My ex was regular as clockwork, you could set your clock by him. Me, no chance, I go when I have to, there's no way I can wait. We're all different.

Meanwhile, I've remembered one. I had to send out an email to a large number of people, as I had received a phone call about a team's Xmas lunch out. Only the caller couldn't tell me which team or who made the booking, only that the team came from our place of work.

Fine, I sent out a quick email with the caller's details, asking for the right team to contact them. But I forgot to switch off the email tracking, as I routinely set my email to give me read and delivery receipts (necessary for some stuff). I could have wept when I realised I was getting receipt after receipt............

Was some years ago now, and I haven't done it again.

On the subject of office poops, I just can't go anywhere except from home unless I have a bad stomach. I sort of envy those who can, because I've held for hours before, but I, too, get stage fright in public places.

Funniest company wide emails...well actually my favourite wasn't my company, but one of my clients, who sent an email to advise everyone on his contacts list of his change of address. Including the then prime minister, online shops he had purchased from, and I wish I could remember more details of who else but it was the most random, longest list of addresses I've ever seen! Made me chuckle.

We get lots of fork stealer emails too. And someone in a different office who always emails us about what's happening that week, visitors etc, which are completely irrelevant to us 100 miles away.

Also not an email, but Ionce had a boss who stood in the middle of our office and shouted loudly (while we were on the phones to customers) that she wanted us all to close the doors to the toilets because she didn't think it looked nice leaving the doors standing ajar (single cubicles, not people leaving the door open while they pee). It was embarassing trying to keep the convo going with the customer who could clearly hear the wrath of my toilet hating boss.

And also, same boss angrily proclaiming that people needed to stop eating all of her chicken from the fridge because it was her chicken and if we couldn't do this she was going to stop buying lunches. (this company bought in a tesco shop every week, for staff to help themselves to for lunch, which was never labelled with individual names. If she had told anyone it was her chicken and not to eat it, nobody would have eaten it) she was batshit tbf

I sort of envy those who can, because I've held for hours before, but I, too, get stage fright in public places.

My work has several accessible loos on each floor and they are empty 99% of the time. It's like a luxury poop palace and knowing that you're doing it on the company dollar feels great

On another note, I've just remembered an email I received in a previous job. The social media guy at head office was apparently sacked and escorted from the premises, but not before he sent a scathing email to staff across all sites. His manager tried to re-call the message but we'd all seen it and were on the phone to other branches to discuss the gossip