Today during work I got an email from a coworker where she was announcing that she was leaving the company and saying goodbye to the people she had worked with in the email. She was someone that had worked with me on one of my big projects, and even though we’re not in the same department anymore, we still chat every now and then. We even partied it up when I was in Seattle a couple years ago. So I was a little sad to hear that she was leaving, so I wrote her back an email saying how much I’ll miss her and how she’s one of the few people I still keep in touch with “on the other side”.

To my horror, right after I clicked on the “Send” button, I had realized that instead of hitting “Reply”, I had hit “Reply all”. I went into a panic. I looked at the recipient list and saw that there about 50 names on there, peers in my old department, managers, department heads and a vice president of the company. I became “that guy”…you know, the person who replies to everyone with stupid crap like, “Yeah, me too!” or “OK” - stuff that they should have just replied to the original sender. The guy who doesn’t care that they’re clogging up your email box with their email that’s really meant for one person.

I debated on replying to everyone again and saying “Oops, sorry!” but that would have just made it worse. I was using webmail, so I couldn’t recall the email (and really, recalling an email doesn’t prevent people from seeing it - once it’s sent, it’s sent!). So I just gave up and stewed in my own embarrassment.

Now I’m totally going to be paranoid with every email I send, checking to see who it’s being sent to.

Never again!

Tags: Whine and Cheese //