I just did a really stupid thing at work

[sasvermont]

I was trying to send a "stream of Consciousness" memo/note/email to the managing partner who is on vacation and may be checking her emails....It was a "FYI" or for your information..... It was short and to the point, for which I am grateful. I ended up sending it to the person it was about! Can you believe it. As soon as I hit "send" I knew it. I then sent a second email to the person, saying....."just kidding".... he replied "no problem"......

Here is what my email said: "I don't care for THS' laugh, at all"...... and I sent it to THS! I guess it could have been a lot worse, but I feel so stupid. It has really taught me a big lesson about emailing "emotions" at work and to co-workers. Thank goodness I didn't go all out about how his laugh is driving me nuts. There are other things about him that don't make for a nice working environment, but he probably feels the same way about me. I have made a point to send him other emails and chat with him, to engage him, if you will, so he will forget that I ever emailed that to him. My guess is that he is soooo much into himself, that he didn't even notice that the email was about him, rather than to him.

Anyone else ever shot themselves in the foot at work?

Ugh.

[Laura's Babies]

OUCH! Bet you felt really bad when you realized your mistake.. People you work with do get on your nerves sometimes. Sometimes you just want to scream!

[catnapper]

Oh yeah, I've done that one!

I accidentally forwarded an email to EVERYONE about how much I hated one lady name Elizabeth. One person tried ot cover it up but it didn't help. Elizabeth still hates me nearly a year later -- oh well, no love lost there

[Samantha Puppy]

Not at work, but I went off about my best friend to my husband... and accidentally included her in on it as well. Oops.

[Lizzie]

I can just imagine how you felt the second after you hit the send button, kind of frozen because you know there is not stopping it once that key has been hit.

I haven't done what you did, but I did have one of my emails forwarded on through several people to the person it was about. I work at a large university and one of the higher level administrators decided that it would be a good idea to have a model of a future academic building in our building so that students could "see the future". It was huge and after a couple of years (there were financial difficulties) I was sick and tired of it getting in the way. I wrote to someone I know and asked if she knew when we could get "the blasted thing out of the way so we can stop falling over it" and she, most unfortunately, passed it on to someone in that administrator's office, who passed it on to another support person, who then emailed it on to the administrator. He read through the entire thing, which was about 3 pages long at this point, and of course read my opinion of his pet project. He wrote to me, apologizing in a very sarcastic manner that his work was in my way. I went icy cold all over when I read it, almost stopped breathing from horror. Fortunately, I was too unimportant for him to think about any more so there were no awful repurcussions, though my boss was very unhappy. And he did have "the blasted" thing moved to another building where they would appreciate it!

[Barbara]

Oh Sas! I am so sorry. I would be red in my face like a if I ever saw that guy.

I have done something similar one day when the phones were not so luxurious as they are now: My assistant was covering the phone with her hand when she asked we whether I wanted to talk to Mrs X and I said: "I am not in the office." which she overheard

I had a lot of talking to do until I convinced her I had said that only because I had something very urgent for my boss and had to concentrate on that.

But you may be comforted by the following story: A lady from our call-center forwarded a mail and in Outlook hit the first of the address list which in our company is a list called AB1 which is all the heads of the departments. The mail she forwarded was a pornographical one!

This could have never happened to me - but how easily could I have forwarded cat related mails

[Edwina's Secretary]

Do you know the story of the executive at Boeing who was brought out of retirement to "bring ethics back" and then had to be fired for an extra-marital affair with a coworker?

I had heard how he was caught before but two weeks ago I had a teaching assignment at Boeing and confirmed the story.

Boeing, to protect itself and prevent abuse, has an email filter that filters for certain words.

He was sending emails to his paramour using these words. (I think we can safely assume him to be a less than articulate lover as well as a general scumbag.) He triggered the filter sending red flags and reading of his emails.

Caught .....there IS a moral to this story.

[king2005]

When I was back in Ottawa I had a co-worker named Rob (as many of you know my ex was named Rob aswell)... I was chatting to both on msn.. my ex was going to bed so I wrote, "love you sweety & good night".. I sent that to my co-worker!!! He sent a message, saying... ummm Jess thanks, but I don't think that was ment for me lol.. OMG I went soooo red in the face!!

[zippy-kat]

We have a regular pain in the arse client whom I always try to "kill with kindness." This guy is so incredibly frustrating for many, many reasons. At any rate, he called one day (a Monday in the truest sense of the word) and I was bending over backwards to help him. At the end of the phone call, he said, "Thank you for xyz."

Now. What I MEANT to respond was, "Thank you, no problem."
But what I said was, "No thanks, you're problem." ARGH!

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Then there's the time I was running late on my lunch break and decided to grab something out of the fridge before I headed back to the office. I grabbed what I thought was a diet coke....

Once at the office, my boss comes walking thru, "Uh, are you going to drink that?"

"Yep." Previously, he'd lectured me about drinking diet sodas, so I didn't think too much about it.

"You think you could, uh, maybe wait until after work?"

I turned around to see what the heck was so wrong with my diet coke and was absolutely mortified to see a can of Coors Light sitting on my desk.

Opps.

[king2005]

We have a regular pain in the arse client whom I always try to "kill with kindness." This guy is so incredibly frustrating for many, many reasons. At any rate, he called one day (a Monday in the truest sense of the word) and I was bending over backwards to help him. At the end of the phone call, he said, "Thank you for xyz."

Now. What I MEANT to respond was, "Thank you, no problem."
But what I said was, "No thanks, you're problem." ARGH!

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Then there's the time I was running late on my lunch break and decided to grab something out of the fridge before I headed back to the office. I grabbed what I thought was a diet coke....

Once at the office, my boss comes walking thru, "Uh, are you going to drink that?"

"Yep." Previously, he'd lectured me about drinking diet sodas, so I didn't think too much about it.

"You think you could, uh, maybe wait until after work?"

I turned around to see what the heck was so wrong with my diet coke and was absolutely mortified to see a can of Coors Light sitting on my desk.

Opps.

hehehe you made me LOL at work heheh...

[Killearn Kitties]

Oh SAS, I have done that very thing, and it is a terrible, terrible feeling. I very rarely commit such thoughts to email, purely because of how traceable digital messages are, but there was one day I sounded off about a co-worker who was getting on my very last nerve, and then sent it to her by mistake! I had to fly through to her desk and got there roughly the same time as the email. Some very quick thinking was required, but I did get out of it.

I think you are doing the best thing by just engaging with him for a while.

[Cataholic]

Look at the bright side, maybe he will change his laugh?

I had one of the partners send me an email in response to something I sent, and it said, "did you mean to send this to me"? Of course, I panicked, and it took me an hour to figure out what he was referring to. My girlfriend had referenced adoption, as in rescue pet adoption, and I had circulated the email far and wide! I guess he thought I was looking to adopt a baby? LOL. As if that would have been 'racy' or something to send out? LOL. I still think it is funny. He assured me he hadn't read it and deleted it immediately once he saw the content. LOL.

[Daisy and Delilah]

OMG!! I'll bet you were downright nauseated after that one. Maybe he won't annoy everyone with that obnoxious laugh so much anymore

[Pam]

SAS there is a good lesson in this for all of us and that is to check once, twice or even three times before we click *send.* Unfortunately my own sister-in-law learned this the hard way. Several years ago I received an e-mail from her and it was obvious that it wasn't meant for me. It could almost be considered x-rated and unfortunately it wasn't mean for her hubby at the time either. Shortly after she hit *send* she realized what she had done and called me crying and told me it was a joke. Of course I wasn't born yesterday and even I know that when you tell a joke it doesn't make you cry. It turns out that it was meant to go to a guy she worked with with whom she was having an affair. Apparently our names were next to each other in her address book. She said she was even thinking to herself *don't make a mistake and send this to Pam,* and that is exactly what she did. Update on her: She and my brother-in-law divorced a couple of years later and she didn't even wind up with the guy who was the object of the steamy e-mail.

[RICHARD]

learn to recall messages!

Microsoft Outlook has a dandy feature that allows you to recall messages that are unread....you have to pray that they aren't on line at the moment.

P.S.
I do that do my boss,
I send a blank message then recall it.......it drives her mad.