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?

A couple at work were married to other people. They were flirting over work email and plotting lunchtime quickies.

Back and forth they wrote For weeks on one email thread until the fateful day one of them CC in All Staff! Unfortunately his wife worked in the same firm and saw it along with 800 other staff.

@MintyCedric

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

Easy done, both ways round..

www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-york-north-yorkshire-35899023

I used to have an assistant who had had a meteoric rise through the company 🤔.

As she was my assistant we had access to each other’s emails. I was working late and needed to get some info that I knew was in her deleted items mailbox. It had been send from my big boss and I knew the date but not the subject line.

That’s how I confirmed that she was indeed bonking my big boss (not a surprise but he fired a freelance business adviser who took him to one side and told him he - a married man - was being unprofessional shagging his secretary and giving her huge bonuses whilst others got sod all).

Not email but WhatsApp

Two separate group chats. One between a couple of colleagues who are friends outside of work. The second is a whole department group chat for general updates, queries and shift swaps.

In the whole dept group someone posted a picture of a list up in the staff room of which staff had been allocated a place on a particular course that has limited places, is highly in demand and is only run every six months. A lazy and pretty difficult colleague (who had only been there six months) was allocated a place over staff members who had been there well over a year.

One of the colleagues who had been overlooked for a place replied to the whole dept chat with "Fucking Jane Doe?!??! Are they taking the piss?!?!?" ... intended for the private chat between a couple of us ... that was interesting!

Ahhh yes 😂
“When are you coming round?” Was sent to me by my son’s friend when he was grounded - he was grounded for even longer.

They won’t make that mistake again!!!

@LaLoose

Working in an office years ago, my friend and colleague emailed me: 'F*%&ing hell I've had it today. Fancy coming out on the lash after? I quite fancy trying to get laid.'

Except she emailed our boss, who shares my first name. A very straight-laced older lady. Who gamely replied: 'What a very kind offer, thank you! But I'm afraid those days are rather behind me.'

What a good sport!

Never had any bad or funny ones myself but a colleague showed me a very lighthearted one once that was sent by someone from another company, completely out of the blue with subject line “Hi”:
“Oh my god I love Big Macs!”

Her first name was very common so we assumed he’d meant it for someone else with her name and it gave us a good giggle.

@maartjebaabes

One of the big bosses had two PAs, a senior one say Joan who was a larger older lady and a young one say Kim who was reputed amongst the younger men (of course not me!) to be a 'goer'.

I emailed Joan looking to schedule a meeting with Big Boss as soon as possible.

She replied

Sorry Maartje but I am VERY BUSTY.

You need to see Kim for a good time

It was a typo, but was probably more true with the typo than without.

This is BRILLIANT

A very senior person sent round an email to everyone in my organisation, a little while ago, complimenting the NHS, and particularly the wonderful nurses who were "working through their long shits".
I don't think I'd want a nurse who was working though a long shit - most unsanitary!
It was quickly recalled, but not before I'd seen it.

Not email but phone message. A scientist in our research department sent an X rated voicemail to the receptionist with whom he was having a torrid affair. Nobody had known about the affair until he pressed the wrong button and sent it to the entire research department.

A technician in the QA department was annoyed that the ladies' toilet in her building had been broken all morning. She knew the head of maintenance was Mr. Smith so she phoned him and left a message 'YOU NEED TO FIX THE TOILETS IN BUILDING 9 IMMEDIATELY!'. Unfortunately there was more than one Mr. Smith at the company, which is why our CEO came out of his office in a confused state and told his PA 'I think Teresa in QA is annoyed with me about something'.

A friend of mine found out he was going to lose his job when an email telling someone else in the company about it was accidently sent to him. That was a bit sad.

Not an email but I was once meeting someone for the first time...we had friends in common who had suggested we meet as we were both away from home in the same city. Just before we met I got a text clearly meant for one of them saying 'Just about to meet Ink, will let you know what I think of her later' . I politely did not mention it and we got on well.

I had one once that was from a school I'd never heard of, telling me something about 'my son'. It was meant for somebody with the same first initial and surname as me.

Mine is pathetic in comparison, nothing juicy.

(Long story) my contract got delayed for months, along with many others I guess, due to the coronavirus crisis. So I waited months for backpay. In the middle of this I was copied in on a long chain including comments from a very senior manager in our partner organisation about how people shouldn't be moaning about working without contracts. "There's no excuse for any moaning just get on with the work anyway!" he seemed to say.

I thought it was rather crappy attitude from someone on a very very cushy salary in permanent job. Good job I deleted the msg rather than say my piece.

MD emailed department head, HR (me) and others about wanting to dismiss one of the team members. Also emailed said 'team member'. That was a fun day

Not an email but had 2x brilliant zoom accidents happen during lockdown

1. On an all dept zoom with ceo there was one guy hadn’t muted his laptop and was having a phone conversation about how boring the meeting was but at least he wasn’t having to pretend to work from home 🤭

Second one senior team meeting one lady’s husband hadn’t realised she was On a video meeting and past in his boxers 😂

If they insist that you Web chat even if your PC is not working at all then yes that's rather daft.
Like tech support that emails you a new password when you've forgotten yours, and can't access e-mail..

I used to work for a car insurance company, dealing with claims / car repairs and hire bills.

I called a customer and asked them to send me images of their car damage - he sent me about 15 photos - 5 of the car and 10 of someone I assume was his girlfriend dressed up for a night out then a random 2 of her topless

In the same job I asked a garage to send me a copy of their estimate and communication log with a customer as we'd received a complaint. Received both along with an email chain between the garage manager and the receptionist complaining about how awful customer was (including some very colourful and imaginative language and confirming the manager had sworn at the customer which was part of his complaint) with one thrown in at the end about me being 'up myself' when I called 🙄

Not exactly but I work for a company that is connected to many others - I got an email inviting me to take part in some work that involved 2 weeks in London creating training materials. Not really our remit but I was enthusiastic so signed up. Arrived to find I was the only person from our company (I am the lowest grade) and came to the conclusion that my (quite common) name was similar enough to another who should have been invited! I have a fascinating 2 weeks jolly that looked really good on my end of year review.

Many many emails mentioning amazing, gorgeous shits, when really talking about shots, as in photos, I worked in a photo studio, this happened every day.

I was involved in putting in a tender for a job with a big company , there were a couple of other company's trying for it to.

The boss of the big company sent me a email saying
Thank you for your quote of £xxxx to do A,B and C , I will get back to you ,
Only he had sent it to me by mistake we had not yet submitted our quote yet.
So I sent a quote for £xxxx to do A,B,C and would do D as well as part of our periodic work .
We got the contract

A friend of mine once sent an email to a very senior professional contact. She meant to end it. "Please do contact me."

She actually ended it "Please do me"

I cried with laughter when she showed me. Proper tears.

I once sent a funny cat email to my team (about 8 people). Unfortunately I sent the email to one of our local contacts, they shared the same first name as a friend. I only realized when I got a message back saying thank you for the email, she had, had an awful day and it had made her laugh

@Laaalaaaa

Sandwich van - I don’t think there’s anybody in my city that wasn’t forwarded this email.

I don't understand

I sent the school parents’ WhatsApp a message and a photo meant for DH saying: “What do you think, a bit too feminine maybe?”.
Luckily the photo took a while to upload and I managed to block it.
THEN I reassured them it was only a light fitting for the sitting room...

Not RTFT but skimmed and can’t see this mentioned...

About three years ago a lady called Rosemary set up a new email group on her nhs.net email account and sent them a “test” email. Except she accidentally emailed the entire nhs.net directory. I’d assume millions of email addresses. And then a bunch of hapless people hit reply all with “I don’t think this was meant for me. She brought down the entire email function for a day, and it was patchy for about a week thereafter. Had to go and actually have a face-to-face chat with my colleagues that day... it was hell 😂