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?

Not sure it's the best, prob the worse. DDs hideous form tutor in year 10 meant to forward my email to the Head of Year, but instead replied to me …… it said "Mum making excuses again!!!!!". DD had terrible anxiety at the time and it was incredibly difficult to get her into school at times. At least I knew exactly where I stood in terms of support etc from her.

She panicked and I got a second email seconds later …. I didn't answer for a few days.

In on email an old manager of mine misspelt the name of the very senior person she was sending it to and her own name resulting in an email that read:

Dear Body (should have been Boyd)

Lots of serious work content.

Kind regards

Oral (should have been Orla)

All in the one email and the connotations of both misspellings still have those of us copied on it laughing seventeen years later. In fairness to her she died of mortification but not after falling to her knees hysterically laughing when we pointed it out to her.

@GrandAltogetherSo You're wrong but thanks for commenting.

When I worked at an investment bank, one of the analysts sent a weekly round up of the sector to all our support services clients. One week he was trying to send an email to his friend but inadvertently emailed our client list a link to a Sun article along the lines of "X in anal sex shocker".

Luckily most saw the funny side, a few said it was an improvement on his usual yawnfest email.

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!

There are many IT problems you could be having which would not render Web chat inaccessible - error in a particular piece of software, unable to access a shared drive, password to an application forgotten, printer broken etc. Many users like Web chat, and it's perfectly reasonable alternative to a phone call if you can access it. If you can't, then of course pick up the phone. If they insist that you Web chat even if your PC is not working at all then yes that's rather daft.

@WanderingMilly

I once worked for a company that was trying to remove a senior person in another department, but we all dealt with her. She was strict but knew her job, they hated her as she was a woman and extremely competent.

An email came out to all of us asking for our "feedback and complaints" about her, obviously hoping to build up a case against her. I thought it was all wrong.

I emailed back a very balanced report, emphasising her good points. I carefully put her name in BC...…

They did get rid of her but she thanked me afterwards for giving her the thumbs up about what was happening so she could prepare herself, and also for my support. I just thought it was the right thing to do at the time.

This was pretty fair of you.

I told my former boss I’d meet him at 6 o’clock in the car park of a pub near where we worked.

Meant to send it to my colleague.

Thankfully he found it very funny and emailed me back saying “what do you do for a fiver?”

We all found it quite amusing. That was 15 years ago. Presumably he’d be fired now!

Not email related ... but ...

In our company we use smartphone app for "diary/field studies" to take pictures to capture setup, installation, context of use, etc. In the research team everyone has a company work phone, and the pictures from that app are pooled for meeting review.

Our new intern ended up using the phone for some personal use, not knowing that images are pooled review. She used the phone over the weekend and the team got some nice pictures of a sunset, some clothing items from Brown Thomas, some nice dog pictures, some plates of food ... and a few of her cum covered face.

All female team and the content was shown to her, deleted, and she knows to keep the work phone for work!!

‘I need the whole team to resign immediately’

I sent it.

I meant to sign again. Not quit their jobs. I got a few panicked phone calls about that one.

In my last company I worked for a man who really didnt like one of my sales colleagues. I dont know why, she wasnt brilliant but she was overweight and pregnant! When she came back from maternity leave he sent a late night email to his own boss saying 'he didnt want that fat cow with a baby coming back into the team and could they move her somewhere else'.

Needless to say as he had her name in his head he sent it to her....

@BlankTimes

There's a funny novel by Matt Beaumont called 'e' and it's written entirely as emails from individuals and company wide, mainly in the advertising sector.

He also did a Christmas party one and has done a more recent social media one. They're hilarious.

Not an email and not me but a former boss sent a text intended for his girlfriend to a very elderly and proper female client saying: “fancy a shag?”

Apparently the client was surprisingly gracious and they held onto the account

A company I worked at took over another one - their employees had a clause that tied them to work for the new combined co for a few months so they could get a bonus - then they were free to leave, which a number chose to do.

The boss sent out an announcement that one particular senior woman in legal was off and thanking her for her contribution - his PA replied to everyone with "contribution my arse".

Later that year the PA was going on Mat leave and we had a collection and presentation - as the boss got up to speak someone at the back shouted "pregnant my arse"

My favourite ones are where somebody uses the wrong distribution list and sends a normal work request to 20,000+ people.

Inevitably somebody then replies all saying "I don't think this was meant for me".

Then somebody replies all saying "Please remove me"

Then another saying "And me please"

Then somebody replies all saying "DON'T REPLY ALL!!!!"

Suddenly there are 800 emails from people getting increasingly angry until the poor email server dies.

Just entertaining to watch.

Not really an accidental email, more an accidental email address.

Apparently I have a namesake who's a quite well known sportsperson in the US but who didn't claim their free Gmail account in their name as quickly as I did. He's also clearly thick and doesn't know his own email address.

I can only assume that it's [email protected] or something instead of my [email protected] but I've been getting their confidential emails, 'gameplays'(?), invitations, password reminders, dating notifications etc. for years. I could write a book about his life. I even know who cuts his grass and what he likes on Netflix.

In a meeting a very nice but shy male colleague shared his laptop screen onto the big public board.
He inadvertently revealed that many of his emails were from sex sites..
We all just looked away and talked about the weather.

When I was very junior at my company we had code names for senior managers. One older, fairly weathered senior manager who was quite old school sported an impressive beard so had the nickname Treebeard. He also had a reputation for being unnecessarily sharply spoken and regularly made junior members of staff cry.

One time when he had done this my friend intended to send an email to me saying "Watch out, Treebeard's on the war path and has made his secretary cry again". But didn't sent it to me and instead sent it to Treebeard. She fronted it out and told him she'd sent him an email about someone else to him by accident, but he 100% knew it was about him.

Still makes me cry laughing thinking about the look of horror on her face and her attempt to claim it was about someone else.

I was a part of committee ages before but had left.

The emails were incessant and though I had blocked them they still came through

The former chair of the meeting had given far too much sway to two individuals who were challenging and overinvested, they turned what could have been a useful vehicle for change into a tedious talking shop.

After he moved on, a woman took over and put a stop to it all. One of the problem people did a Send To All absolutely slating this woman, and not only that, included her in the email.

People then started to reply to tell them how out of order they were. Even as a innocent bystander it was 🍿

I had met a new chap and we were due to jet off on our first proper romantic getaway together.

I sent the chap an upbeat e-mail telling him I couldn’t wait to get my hands on him at Gatwick, what clothes I would be wearing, and that I would be eagerly waiting for him at the departure gate prior to boarding the aircraft...

By total mistake I sent the message instead to a policeman (who had assisted when I was hit by a drunk driver). He did send me an amusing reply though!

I can think of three off the top of my head.

First one was from my solicitor when I was going through my divorce about 18 months ago. His secretary had sent a detailed email to him, about an upcoming divorce case, very personal details about finances, courts dates, child access etc... and had somehow managed to cc me into the email. It was not about my divorce. I emailed back to say I probably shouldn’t have been cc’d, but was never mentioned.

Second involved Skype. I was making a coffee in the office one Monday lunchtime and a colleague came up make one and have a chat. Within seconds I realised he was absolutely stinking of alcohol, and confirmed my thoughts that he may have had a problem with drinking (hadn’t been the first time, but never said anything). I went back to my desk, and had a Skype message from a colleague asking about a piece of work, was going to join me at the coffee area but saw I was talking to X, so Skyped me instead. Offered advice on the question she had, and went back to working on my own thing. She then asked how X was, and at that point someone came up to my desk to ask something else. 10 mins later, I went to reply, saying that I suspected X smelt rather strongly of alcohol, however managed to open a Skype message which X had sent me earlier in the day, and replied to him, saying “X is smelling quite strongly of alcohol, I hope he is careful as he sits next to Y (his manager). Wished the ground would have opened up and swallowed me whole.

Finally, a random woman emailed my team about a year ago, providing screenshots and email trails of a, fairly senior, female employee from one of our Far East offices who was shagging this woman’s husband, demanding what we do about her, send it to the CEO. Think it just got brushed under the carpet.

I emailed a group of Rainbow parents reminding them to send their daughter with "old shits or aprons for cooking". I meant shirts. They needed old shirts to wear over their uniform so it didn't get covered in chocolate.

I recently sent a job offer to someone with an email address @hotmail.com. I received a very nice email back thanking me, but that she lived in India, hadn't recently attended an interview in London and that perhaps I'd got the email address wrong!

Oops! Who knew there was a difference between .co.uk and .com?! (OK, so probably everyone except me, but thank goodness it didn't contain any personal data!)

I once referred to our manager in an email as Christ instead of Chris...

Years ago I was recruiting internally for a position in my team. Our team were based all over the country and many of us WFH, so the successful candidate could do the job from wherever they happened to be based.

We decided to do the interviews in London as both me and the other manager were based there.

After sending out invitations for the London interview by email, I got a reply back from one of the candidates who was based in Liverpool, saying 'oh crap, London! Just my bloody luck!' Or words to that effect. I emailed her straight back, asking if she had meant to send that to me. She called me in a panic, explaining she had meant to send it to a friend, and that she thought the job was London based.

I explained that the job could be done from anywhere, and assured her that I wouldn't hold this against her in the interview, as I realised it was just a silly mistake anyone could make. I honestly didn't hold it against her in the interview process, but someone else got the job anyway.

In my office, we have 3 email addresses for our Press Office: 1 to the team that deals with your particular area of business, 1 for senior Press Officers and one that sends round press cuttings/media links to the whole company - everyone from the cleaners to the CEO - effectively an all-user.

Some colleagues were planning a press release, but they were using all 3 addresses, so the whole company was in on their cunning plan in tedious detail. After some to-ing and fro-ing, I finally replied to all saying that if they were going to reply, could you please remove [email protected] from the cc list, as they were sending it to the whole company. Needless to say, the emails stopped abruptly.

I got an email the next day from one of my colleagues calling me a legend.