Accidental and atrocious email disasters..!!!
Accidental and atrocious email disasters..!!!
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7795

Original Poster:

1,071 posts

211 months

Friday 16th June 2017
quotequote all
We've all done it and this latest one from a work colleague and it was a corker...

To set the scene; it was from the Group MD to the European workforce of 5000+ (this includes the MD's wife of 30+ years who runs HR Europe and is very, very obese!). Tuesday's email detailed the plans for the 2017 Christmas party.

Pretty instantaneously one of our French colleagues (person A) made a genuinely witty industry based joke reply that was actually quite funny (he later got pulled up for email misuse!).

This morning, I'm still in shock at the repercussions that are going to happen, person B who has been previously been on holiday responded to person A's email with "Reply All":

"It will be exactly that, the issue is that many people will be travelling from Europe and ****** ((MD's wife)) will have eaten all the cake, buns and food before they arrive. shes so fat that if she got home and **** ((MD!)) was shagging ((name of girl MD is shagging)) you'd smell her fowl breath a mile off and besides she cant fit through doors anyway. great party but im not going, rubbish idea. good on him though, for getting away with it for so long, i would!!"

If you work in the telecommunications sector, you may have seen it hahahahaha

WHOOPS

Come on PH, you must have some corkers...


devnull

3,869 posts

187 months

Friday 16th June 2017
quotequote all
I've often said: if you want to cull a workforce, then the easiest way to find the thickos is to look at the fallout of a "reply to all" bomb that often happens in large workplaces.

For those of you who don't know what a reply to all bomb it, it's when someone sends an email to a large amount of people, perhaps a distribution list, someone accidentally replies to all on that list, and there a resultant onslaught of people replying to all saying "please can you not reply to all".

They can go on for hours, 72 hours is the world record I've seen in my workplace. Heads did roll over that one because people were sending abusive emails after a point.

NerveAgent

3,871 posts

250 months

Friday 16th June 2017
quotequote all
My....colleague once emailed his American female colleague to let her know that the floppy dick should arrive in the next week.

(Yes it was a heavily regulated industry where there was a crossover of the two technologies)

anonymous-user

84 months

Friday 16th June 2017
quotequote all
Not exactly a "reply to all" error....but,

A guy I worked with and sat next to at Credit Lyonnais made the papers when he sent an email to his "mates" about a lady conquest he had the night before.

In a nutshell, he cheated on his girlfriend with a friend of said girlfriend when girlfriend was away on holiday, after the event he drops an email to his mates with some of the glory/gory details, ending with "Am I the worst boyfriend in the world, or what??!!".

One of his friends, who's girlfriend knew my his girlfriend, kinda decides she wanted to fk over him as royally as possible and forwarded it to all of her contacts with the phrase of something like, "Lets nail this cheating ".......

I stood by his desk watching after he said he was getting weird emails and some being abusive.....so I had a look, few more came in in the meantime, so called our boss over...we both said, "Ah, dont worry who's really gonna give a st?".....oooops...this thing went worldwide!

At it peak he was getting over a 1,000 messages a minute, with IT and senior management at Lyonnais being very unhappy indeed!

Story made it the print edition of the Sun, Guardian, Telegraph and Daily Mail, with one of them running a full page interview with friends, family, his mum etc in the weekend edition!! And you could even buy a t-shirt with the whole email printed on it, ending with the phrase, "Am I the worst boyfriend in the world...or what??!!" in huge font! We bought a few and wore them to the office on a Friday....moral support and all that!

He was politely asked to resign not long after.

One paper seemed to link it to a similar episode in book called the Football Factory or something, but he really wasnt the reading type!

Google "Trevor Luxton email"


S11Steve

6,389 posts

214 months

Friday 16th June 2017
quotequote all
Not quite a reply all disaster, but very early proof that nothing on the internet is ever private - A chap called Robert Imlah was the brother of an ex-girlfriend, got a decent job in the city and was living the life like most well paid lads that age prior to the 2008 crash.

He decided to email his mate about his latest conquest, which then got passed around the office, and then passed around the finance sector, and then passed around world media.

http://www.scotsman.com/news/uk/city-banker-facing...

He's still doing alright in the city, but I think he has curbed his philandering and eamiling

Sharky86

147 posts

172 months

Friday 16th June 2017
quotequote all
Not really atrocious but definitely accidental. I vaguely recall reading somewhere that someone's mum sent an e-mail to her solicitor that read 'I am afraid...'. The thing was she accidentally clicked send at that point. It cracks me up every time I think about it hehe

Blakeatron

2,567 posts

203 months

Friday 16th June 2017
quotequote all
Emailed an estimate to a customer, she forwarded it into her husband who replied to her.

She then sent the whole thing to me, including the part where he commented i was "totally out of touch with reality" and a "complete piss taker".

I reponded that i was sorry we couldnt work together this time and that her husband didnt like my pricing, got a very sheepish reply.


iphonedyou

10,421 posts

187 months

Friday 16th June 2017
quotequote all
Sharky86 said:
Not really atrocious but definitely accidental. I vaguely recall reading somewhere that someone's mum sent an e-mail to her solicitor that read 'I am afraid...'. The thing was she accidentally clicked send at that point. It cracks me up every time I think about it hehe
rofl

PBDirector

1,049 posts

160 months

Friday 16th June 2017
quotequote all
its only a small thing but I did once sign off a tense negotiation email with

"Kind Retards"

PartOfTheProblem

1,950 posts

201 months

Friday 16th June 2017
quotequote all
PBDirector said:
its only a small thing but I did once sign off a tense negotiation email with

"Kind Retards"
I did something similar using 'amorously' instead of 'amicably'. Oops.

KarlMac

4,627 posts

171 months

Friday 16th June 2017
quotequote all
PBDirector said:
its only a small thing but I did once sign off a tense negotiation email with

"Kind Retards"
Similar to this, I was working for a facilities management company that specialised in reactive electrical repairs in retail units. For those not involved big high street brands can get very precious about the presentation of their stores, even if if it's just a couple of bulbs out.

After some pretty poor service our person responsible for managing the engineers on call wrote a lengthy email detailing why certain things were not happening and what they were doing to improve them. Very professional and a great response as this was to the head of facilities at Arcadia group.

It was all going well until autocorrect struck and his email was signed off with "once again, apologies for the incontinence"

Very juvenile. Very funny.

Grumpy old git

368 posts

217 months

Friday 16th June 2017
quotequote all
Not exactly an epic example but I once emailed a friend/colleague in my office to discuss why our manager was in a funny mood.

The boss was a large lady who had a nickname she wasn't aware of. My email made reference to "Jabba wobbling in the corner". Unfortunately I'd just come back from holiday and had forgotten to turn off my email forwarding, and when my colleague replied the manager received a copy of the email.

I was summoned to the MD's office where he tried his hardest not to laugh whilst telling me off. Strangely enough our relationship never really recovered. Oops.

williamp

20,436 posts

303 months

Friday 16th June 2017
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"You taste Yum" was a very...er..infamous email disatser...


...17 years ago!!!! it cant be that old, surely??

SiH

1,858 posts

277 months

Friday 16th June 2017
quotequote all
Claire Swires... Norton Rose...
That the one? 17 years; blimey, didn't even realise email was that old!

Billsnemesis

817 posts

267 months

Friday 16th June 2017
quotequote all
SiH said:
Claire Swires... Norton Rose...
That the one? 17 years; blimey, didn't even realise email was that old!
I worked with that guy before he moved to Norton Rose

I was getting copies of that email from Australia

j4ckos mate

3,447 posts

200 months

Friday 16th June 2017
quotequote all
I took a client out of copy and explained to other staff members how had them by the love spuds.



And left one of them in copy


Did the trick tho cos they must have had a discussion based on a email they shouldn't have had and big invoice was paid

Pixel Pusher

10,419 posts

189 months

Saturday 17th June 2017
quotequote all
PartOfTheProblem said:
PBDirector said:
its only a small thing but I did once sign off a tense negotiation email with

"Kind Retards"
I did something similar using 'amorously' instead of 'amicably'. Oops.
That's a bit like emailing a female customer and finding out while reading her reply, that instead of asking if you could run something by her, you typed rub instead.

Who'd be so clumsy?


Phil Dicky

7,194 posts

293 months

Saturday 17th June 2017
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Once offered a customer a discount !!!!!

Edited by Phil Dicky on Saturday 17th June 08:55

anonymous-user

84 months

Saturday 17th June 2017
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I sent a short email

"this thinks I am an even thicker than he is"

To the thick in question rather than my business partner

Said thick who was a bit of cheese in an Insurance company.who were trying to buy our business for quite a lot of money at the time.

Fortunately he was a motivated buyer.

Topbuzz

222 posts

210 months

Saturday 17th June 2017
quotequote all
Not email but fax (sorry)

I was in charge of a 24hour tech support department and while we were changing offices from one town to another we had two night shifts running.
Support guy 1 thought it'd be fun to start faxing guy 2 in the other office. Things escalate and the last fax is just a photocopy of his hand giving the finger.

Unfortunately he pressed the wrong button on the fax machine which sent it to Waitrose head office our largest customer.