to ask what's the best accidental email you've seen?

[travellerist]

Literally an hour ago an email went round to all staff/managers at my work requesting if anyone needed webcams/headphones for remote meetings.

One of my colleagues is friendly with the email sender and I guess he meant to hit reply with his response but instead hit reply all, and his response was...

"That’s the best laugh I’ve had in months…

Web Cams, seriously… have you any idea how ugly half of these people are ? Not seeing them is the best part of working from home… Face Masks are the best thing since sliced bread 😊

Headset, Nah… I’d probably stand up and drag the PC into the kitchen. Don’t suppose you can get ink cartridges though ?"

I'm guessing he's going to hear from HR pretty soon, but it got me wondering if anyone else has some "whoops" email stories?

'We think we're having problems with emails. Can you let IT know if you don't receive this email'.

Also, an email containing a suspected virus forward to the whole company with the heading 'DO NOT OPEN THIS EMAIL!'

Not accidents though, merely hard of thinking.

I’m old, so old I remember when pcs and emails were first brought into the workplace. I was fiddling around with mine, trying to get the hang of it having never used email before. I found a picture of a donkey drinking from a pint glass, and attached it, typed in a quick email saying something to the effect of “this is joe bloggs (scary big boss) on a Friday night. Put joe bloggs in the subject line and sent it to my friends

Only it wasn’t the subject line. It was the cc line

I am rubbish with email still but think I accidently sent my childs head of year an invite to join our clash of clans team?

Brilliant

I once received an email at work that was intended for the sender's girlfriend (same first name and she also worked at the company). Luckily wasn't too racy just said something like "I had an amazing time last night babe, looking forward to doing it again soon" and used slightly cringy pet names. He blushed every time he saw me for months 😊
To add to the embarrassment, he worked in the IT dept...

When I was at university, I had a similar name to someone on the Board of Examiners. I was accidentally cc'd into an email that contained all of the exam results for everyone in the university prior to the exam results being released. So, I knew my grades and all my friends' grades too.
It would've been a major cock up except that universities can do whatever they want and no one holds them to account.

Years ago, working in advertising. Colleague of mine was unexpectedly sick and I had to go into his email to look for something.

About 6 months prior, he had been emailing certain clients offering them a free listing - unfortunately, he happened to offer one client a "free fisting". He politely declined.

He'd sat on that gem for 6 months 😂

Not quite an email, but walking into work (I was a new manager of a single staffed care home) to be told by my colleague whom had had difficulty adapting to changing working practices that the printer was broken. She left, I fixed it, it spat out ten copies of a loooong formal letter of complaint about me (all batshit, loopy, crazy stuff that went nowhere). Left them in her in-tray. She avoided me for a week or so then requested a transfer. 😁

My Husband was having an issue with his line manager- he was always leaving early and would often put his phone on forward to my husband, for no reason.

My husband forwarded me an email his manager sent him, something along the lines of why he needed to leave early again. But for some reason the email husbands manager had sent was included as an attachment, not inc as a chain

• if you see what I mean - so I open the attachment to read it, it opens as an email from the manager - I click reply and write what I think of manager and click send - accidentally replying directly to the manager not DH ...... when I realised it felt like the floor had opened up!

Another advertising gem where I asked a client to send me their advert, sent a picture of his family and then a picture of a pot of chilli 😂

We had a work wide fitness based competition at my last place of work, I was the one monitoring progress as the winner gained a prize and an extra day of holiday.

When it ended I sent am email that said “Miss Winner is the fittest member of Xplc” at the start, I failed to realise that it just made me look like a pervert.

Not an email one, but our IT department (who you phone when computer doesn't work) tells you to try web-chat rather than phoning up. If I could web chat I wouldn't need IT help!

We get some scarily personal emails come through to us. There's a HR distribution list, some people don't look at the email address - they just type HR, put all sorts of personal details then hit send. Cue the email winging it's way to over 2,000 employees...only a fraction of those are actually HR. The rest are just under the HR 'family" umbrella.

It transpired the senior partner of our firm was having an affair with someone call Allison.

HR came down and said "this will never he spoken of again". We were so shocked, it never was! (Until now obvs)

My sister sent an email to a work colleague saying "Do you want me to forward this email to anyone else? " She was distracted and it sent as "Do you want me?" Took a while to live that one down!

I think the worst I've ever seen was when a woman at work had slept with a member of senior staff, to knowing he was married, and his DW sent an email to he whole company showing their email history and announcing her intention to begin divorce proceedings.

The worst I've ever done was when I had a hangover the size of Egypt and emailed a friend (and the entire company) detailing the depth and breadth of the hangover including the toxic waste I'd ejected from my rear end in the mens toilets because I couldn't make it to the ladies in time.

A deliberate email to the effect of “I’ve hated every minute I’ve worked here, so long suckers....” sent to everyone in the whole organisation.

A year later the company this guy went to became one of our framework consultants, and he was put on to those projects as he had experience of working with us. Awkward

An obnoxious senior manager who sent a list of "the 20 best Dumb Blonde jokes" to all the diversity managers in our public sector department.

One of them promptly emailed back (replying to all) saying "Umm, did you perhaps send this as a good example of what not to do in the workplace?"

"No", he responded, "I sent it to the wrong group. Sorry".

He didn't stay a senior manager for much longer than it took for the investigation to be completed...

I was trying to organize a work Christmas lunch so sent an email to everyone including the boss. A colleague of mine did a reply all: "let me know first if (boss) is coming as I am not coming if that twat is there". She then blamed me for not making it clear that he was on the recipient list!

I was emailing the SMT and department head about a member of staff who was under investigation and couldn't remember how to spell her surname so used the global address list to check it. I then pressed send without taking her name out of the bloody "To" box. I did realise and successfully recall it pretty fast and she did not see it, but I did not recall if before SMT had seen it and I got a (well deserved) bollocking for that.

I sent off a reference request to a rival company where the manager had a reputation for being spectacularly rude and difficult. Unusually, I had a very quick reply but not from her. It was the director sending her a furious response asking her why she couldn’t hold on to staff and not to let this one go. He’d replied to all.

I have the first name as someone senior in our legal team.

Nothing too exciting as I work for a software company, but I have been privvy to lots of things I shouldn't (deals in the pipeline, takeovers, contracts etc). They actual have a legal team email address now as it got so bad I had to report it!

One that's happened more than once where I work. A work place wide email is sent saying " x is leaving on x/x/xxxx please sign card and donate some change for a gift" sent to everyone including the person who is leaving.

I was in a meeting with director of comms. They were giving a PowerPoint but their emails were popping up in the corner of the screen so we could see the title and who they were from.

One arrived from the chief exec with the title ‘we’re all doomed’

DH had one once. I do all the DIY in our family and was hanging some pictures, but our drill wasn't strong enough so DH sent an email round our community notices list (who are also all his colleagues, company town) but the autocorrect replaced the word drill with drilling. Hence the email, to all, including the headmaster and all of ELT said "my wife needs a good drilling, the one she has here isn't powerful enough"!

I was secretary for a manager who was responsible for issuing car parking passes for staff and there was a long waiting list for these passes. I once e-mailed the next person on the waiting list offering him a Cat Parking Pass and got a lovely reply saying that, regrettably his cat didn't drive and would probably be very unimpressed about being expected to go to work every day, but he would be more than happy to have the pass on his cats behalf!!