Tuesday, February 07, 2006

Send....oooops!

Have you ever sent an e-mail to the wrong person?

We have a father-daughter team working in our office. The father worked here first, and a couple of years later he asked if we had available employment for his daughter. She lived in another country, and does not have US citizenship. The owner of the company did all the paperwork, and soon the daughter, her husband and their four kids were in the country, and she was working in our office. She and her father are both engineers. For the first year she worked here she shared an office with him. A few months ago, she moved into another office, directly across from the father. They are bright, talented, and hard working. And they both have an enormous difficulty with the English language – both speaking and writing.

At least once a week a company-wide e-mail goes out from one of the two of them detailing the reason why the other will not be at work. Just a sentence or two – a few quick words. It makes for some funny shit. Particularly on a Monday morning.

For however it matters, this is not way we do things around here. They are the only two people in the office who send out the company-wide notifications. The rest of us put it on the Company Outlook calendar, and shoot an e-mail to HR. But not these two.

Imagine getting one of these in the body of an e-mail. No subject, just this:

Fermo - can't come to the office today, because he is sick.

Ana will be out of office for today. She got unexpected important matter to attend. I sent message early this morning but it didn’t get thru. I goes to Outlook and I called Tim about it.

I almost forgot Ana is sick and didn’t come to work. Sorry.

Fermo may come in-late or may not come to work. My mom is sick she can’t get off from bed.

Fermo- out; still sick

Fermo didn’t come to work because he still has blurred vision due to his eye surgery yesterday.

Fermo will be late this morning, he went to Bayside Hospital for his blood chem..

I will be going home; I feel sick and have a severe headache.

Fermo still weak to work, needs more rest. He will be here on Monday.

Fermo can't work, he is still sick.

Fermo can't work. He has severe cough and fever.

Now let me give you some background. When Father started working for the company, he never spoke to me. But…he would raise one eyebrow, wink and smile. A dirty little smile. The kind of smile that says “I want to make sweet Filipino love to you right here on my drawing table.” It was creepy. The kind of creepy that makes you laugh, but creepy just the same.

Now imagine this…The father and daughter are not really father and daughter. Father’s wife is ill. Father needs some sweet Filipino lovin’ from a sweet, younger Filipino. Father brings over an entire family of Filipinos. Moves them into his house, and bangs the younger Filipino like he’s doing nightly auditions for a low-paying Asian porn flick.

Now I don’t know if all of this is true, but it is fun to imagine. And it does make the e-mails even more exciting. A few of us e-mail comments back and forth about the “out of work” e-mails. (Some of you work, and you know that you have to find ways to entertain yourself at work.)

There was one time in particular where the illness was being passed around the house. One of them was sick with a cold, and the next day the other was sick. I couldn’t help but forward the second e-mail to a friend, along with the following:

“I guess all that bed sharing must be spreading germs. They pass that shit back and forth like a couple of guys on a basketball court. Those two must not get any sleep.”

As soon as I hit send, I knew what I had done. I sent it to the Father. It wasn’t ten freakin’ minutes later, and Dad was in my office asking, “What you mean, Dena?”

Luckily, I’m pretty quick. I fuck up a lot. I have to be quick.

Me: What?
Dad: You send me e-mail.
Me: Oh, yeah. I did.
Dad: What that mean?
Me: Didn’t you go to the ODU basketball game last night? With the boss?
Dad: No???
Me: Oh, I thought you did. I heard there was a virus going around the ODU stadium. I thought maybe you caught it.

Yep, I was almost busted.

dena at 3:56 PM

13comments

13 Comments

at 4:16 PM Uisce said...: Thank god for quick wits. I would have been curled up in a ball on the floor, no question about it!
at 4:53 PM soapbox.SUPERSTAR said...: Still not as good as the time you accidentally sent one to Alicia.
at 4:59 PM Anonymous said...: I'm the type person that has to leave the room if something really embarrasing is about to happen on a television show. You know, when you see it coming and you know what is going to happen. I just can't take it, it's too uncomfortable. That's why reading your email, once I figured out where it was going, was torture. Like fingernails on an embarrassment chalk board. I kept thinking, no she didn't, no she didn't, I can't watch, I mean read. Arrrghh, she did it! Very, very funny though.

I did something similar once, panicked, then rememberd what I do for a living and figured out a way to work faster than the speed of TCPIP to stop it before it got read. That was years ago and every since I do a triple check before hitting send and leave the To: field empty until I've double-checked what I've wrote so that I won't accidentally send it before I'm ready.
at 5:50 PM Anonymous said...: yeah, i've screwed up with e-mails, but not to the extent that you did, not that you screwed up though, ummmm, never mind.
at 5:51 PM Chatty said...: I do that all the time. Whoopsies! LOL
at 7:20 PM NaeNae said...: That is one funny story! I too have sent an email on accident - but it wasn't that funny. It just put me in an ackward situation. I accidentally sent directions to my daughter's birthday party to someone that was NOT invited. The odd thing is that she found out about the party beforehand and questioned others as to why she wasn't invited. Kid party + adult with no children? Hello? She has too much time on her hands.
at 8:28 PM The Mistress of the Dark said...: Ooopsies!
at 12:16 AM Ditsy Chick said...: I sent a snarky email tagged on to my boss' note to a friend, except I hit reply instead of forward.

I ran over to the admin and she deleted it before the boss could read it.

I have never been so close to a heart attach in my life.
at 8:53 AM Erin said...: Hello from Michele's.

That was hysterical! I have messed up a few times, in very similar ways. One of those "open mouth, insert foot" moments!

Have a great day!
at 2:10 PM Your Mother said...: That is funny shit. I replied to the whole company once. Not pretty. Could have been funny if I hadn't been being a bitch. I don't recall exactly what I said but it was something the effect that someone must have pulled a pussy muscle and that is why she was missing monday AGAIN.
at 11:34 PM Anonymous said...: About three years ago someone sent a chain letter to practically everyone in Baltimore City Schools. I'd about had enough of them and I hit the Reply to All button, telling everyone that chain letters were illegal and a violation of the User Policy and a few other things. I don't regret sending to everyone; I was feeling just that obnoxious. However...

What I forgot to do was turn off the Tracking Options in Outlook before hitting "Send". So I got hundreds of "read/not read" receipts for that one email, clogging my email box for a couple of days. I was getting them for literally months.
at 7:44 AM kenju said...: You are lucky that you have a quick mind, Dena. I would have bumbled about trying to think of an excuse and eventually admitted my mistake...LOL
at 10:19 AM Anonymous said...: I haven't but I have always been afraid of that. My poor buddy Tate once sent me one in which she was talking ABOUT me! Thank God it wasn't bad. She once hit reply back to a girl that she meant to forward to me making fun of the girl. The girl sent a note back asking her just what she meant by that? And worse she was going to forward an old family picture to her aunt and sent it all over her entire office building. People were sending her notes saying, "Well how sweet of you to send me a picture of you and your brothers!" She was sick for days.

About

Joyously roaming through life. Meeting its topographical challenges, and facing each with a sarcastic wit, and an impetuous need to face even more bumps, dips, pits and peaks. How the hell else did I end up with a 22 year old, a 20 year old and a 4 year old?