This week, a couple colleagues and I got an email from a random Internet person about some work we had done and published. It was a credentialed person with a legitimate question and he wanted to see what our take on it was. One of my colleagues responded with something reasonably intelligent, and I wanted to follow up a little bit, so I did a 'reply all' and added my two cents. My colleague hits 'reply all' and then posts "That's a good point, but probably a little over the head of our friend here." Unfortunately "our friend here" was CCed on the message. Whoops. The comment wasn't even that warranted, but I think we lost a fan there. FOCUS: When have you, or someone with whom you are acquainted, done something completely cringeworthy like this? Did you try to apologize or otherwise take your foot out of your mouth? Run for the hills? Get plastic surgery to try to change your appearance so you would never have to face the consequences?
This sort of shit happens all the time in my industry. Recently, a consumer legal service published a paper purported to be a definitive study about my industry based upon survey results. The paper was funded out of the public pocket, directly from one of the state governments. Along with the paper, they made their raw data available to anyone that asked (incredibly stupid). We obtained a copy. The first stupid thing was that all respondents had to qualify as being relevant to be counted in the survey results, as evidenced by appropriate responses. 20% of the results used admitted they didn't qualify to take part, but were used anyway. The second stupid thing was that zero responses were obtained from the second biggest market in the country. The ultimate stupid thing was that the results were not de-identified. We were provided with names, addresses and phone numbers of every survey participant who put them in there; which is a clear and massive breach of Federal privacy laws. Our tax dollars at work.
A young admin assistant who used to work in my office once sent the results of her online purity test to the entire company after selecting "all" instead of "Allison" from the address drop-down menu. Apparently she was a pretty big whore.
In high school I was at a restaurant with some of my friends, we were at the "pound food like there's no tomorrow with zero consequences" age range. Our waitress comments on how much we eat and mentions she has two sons that eat almost as much and how much it costs (somewhat cringeworthy itself) to feed them. My friend responds with "Well, better start making some money" It was more awkward than it probably sounds.
Like most companies, the place I used to work at had a global address list (the company had 1k employees in the local facility and globally employed probably 10k). Unfortunately, how they structured the address book wasn't very good and the address lists were buried in among regular employees, and didn't really stand out in any good way. Employees were listed as Firstname Lastname (e.g. Bill Smith) and the lists were Companyname Listtype (e.g. Walmart Global). One day a guy I knew in another department forwarded one of those emails that was going around for a while where a bunch of nude women were standing in front of textured walls, and were painted to look exactly like the wall. It was impressively done, but a 10mb email with a bunch of nude women attached to it wasn't exactly work safe. Curious as to who else got the email I checked the "To" section and saw, copied among the other names, <Company> Global. About 30 minutes later I went down to his cubicle to laugh at him and found it cleaned out, nameplate gone, laptop missing, pictures taken. Totally gone. HR had him out of the building before 90% of the people had even seen the email was sent. These were days before Facebook and such, so I have no idea what happened to him.
Personally, I obsessively check my "To:" fields whenever I send an email, so I very rarely send an embarrassing joke out to the whole company. However, a while back, when I was looking for work, I was working with several recruiters. I exchange several emails with one of them (I assume a passably attractive female), then get this message back: "I feel like I am a trashy girl....leaving her underwear behind. Pete just told him.. Thank God I did not have to..." Well, what can I say - good for her, she got laid. Didn't really get any commission on me, either, though, through no fault of her own. ------------------ My other favorite incident happened when one of my friends was getting married, and we all (friends, relatives) went out for lunch after (not) getting our tuxes fitted. Now, my friends and I love "your mom" jokes, so, one of them makes this offhand crack about how "Yeah, just like I gave it to [Groom]'s mom up the ass last night!". The groom's father was sitting right next to the guy. As the conversation continued, I looked around nervously, but nobody seemed to have noticed, and I sure as hell wasn't going to bring it up, so, bullet dodged there (probably).
When I was waiting to get my security clearance I had to work from home, writing a whitepaper on different testing tools available for our project (what basically amounted to busy work). There were four people in my start group waiting on clearance also, and we used to get together a few times a week for lunch. They also worked on the white paper with me/ We had two strings of emails going on that day. One about the white paper (that had our boss copied on it), and the other was a chain about where we would be eating lunch. I got the following email: ------------------- From: Randy To: Frebis, Dan, Brandon Subject: Lunch Guys, I won't be able to make it to lunch today. My daughter is sick. ------------------- I accidently replied to the wrong string of emails ------------------- From: Frebis To: Boss, Brandon, Randy, Dan Subject: Re: White paper Randy, don't lie you aren't coming to lunch because you want to finish watching the showcase showdown on this excellent episode of the price is right! Thanks Frebis --------------- The next day I got a lecture about watching TV while working from home. Seriously, who doesn't watch the price is right when they work from home?
Kind of forgot about this one, and I'm pretty pissed I didn't send it to my personal e-mail to be able to quote it, but at my old job some environmentalist sent an office wide e-mail saying she found some cigar filters in the parking lot and sarcastically went on to say something along the lines of how she was sure they weren't discarded on purpose and she cleaned them out so the owner could retrieve them. Someone hit reply all and responded with "why don't you sell them on e-bay and use the money to save the whales?" They were both fired.
In high school, I worked at my cousins' restaurant as a hostess. One day, one of my cousins was complaining about another hostess because she was constantly late, didn't give a shit. She followed this by complimenting me on my work ethic and for some reason, instead of just thanking her for the compliment, I said "Plus, I'm family, so you can't really fire me." I think I was trying to be funny, but she looked at me like I was insane and I immediately apologized.
There are a couple emails going around the military that are quite awesome. I don't think I have a copy of either but I can summarize: A Navy ensign (lowest rank officer) was coordinating an event with a retired Chief (very experienced enlisted) over email. Her email address was princessmelody@something.com. In her emails she would call the Chief sir like she was supposed to seeing as he's a civilian. He would call her Melody because that was her first name. She decides after about 8 emails that she will tell this guy off, something like this: "Sir, I have shown you all the respect and courtesies that are necessary, and have repeatedly asked you to call me by my proper title if Ensign So-and-so (she did not), I think I have earned that. So from here on out, please call me by the title that I deserve." He masterful comes back with this. Dear Princess Melody, I am a retired Chief in the Navy, I have served my country for 20 years. I have seen my share of Ensigns during that time and can absolutely tell you that none of them have earned the right to tell a Chief what they think they should be called. I am forwarding this email chain to your Commanding Officer as he is a very good friend of mine. Take care now Princess. -Chief Awesome Foot. In. Mouth. The other involves another Ensign, Ensign Lee who was given a desk job to keep him busy before flight school, something low key like keeping track of the roster itself for morning muster. A paper pushed of sorts. Anywho he writes this elaborate email about how his job is incredibly important and that he will try his very best and strive to excel at it. He makes up all this random stuff that he is supposedly assigned to do like manage the office of Ensigns who work with him, and supply everything the office needs. Basically blowing smoke up his own ass. Well he accidents CC's this to the entire office instead of just his superior. This email makes its way around tons of commands and last I heard about the kid was that he failed out if flight school and got some shit job in an obscure, out of the way command. Genius.
The setting: The office of one of my professors, overhead lights turned off, the room illuminated by a small table lamp and an equally small desk lamp. Dramatis personae: Said professor, another professor, both of whom are African-Americans, and yours truly. Me, upon entering the office: "My God, could it get any darker in here?"
Me: After just sitting down for lunch with two buddies while looking through the local MLS and noticing that a local broker who fucked me on a real estate deal had a daughter selling out of his office. "Huh, I didn't know Bozo had a daughter. She's sorta cute." Buddy: "What difference does that make? You wouldn't date that dudes daughter." Me: "No, but I wouldn't mind giving him a 'knowing' smile from the porch before I took her out and made her call me Daddy while I grudge fucked her in the ass." Waitress who had been standing over my shoulder the whole time: "Well, now that we all know that, would you Romeos like to hear the specials or are you ready to order?"
I found the emails from Princess Melanie...so I decided to post them. Greetings Mr. (CWO4) This message is in response to your initial email regarding establishing contact with your office to set up an interview. Any day for the remainder of this week is fine for me. I can be reached either via email (princess_melanie1985@yahoo.com) or by phone (Phone Number). r/ ENS (Melanie), USN His response: Thanks Melanie - the Director is at a Court Martial this week but may be available late in the day - would that work for you? Vrsp Gene (CWO4) Flag Secretary Naval Safety Center Her respone: Mr. CWO4, I attempted to be subtle in my initial response to you but apparently you didn't catch the hint; from this point foward refer to me as ENS Peterson. I've rendered you the proper professional courtesy in correspondence and will accept nothing less from you. And some other crap. His epic response: Ensign (Retard), I am a 30 year retired CWO4 and know exactly what courtesy's you are due - however, I am a civilian now and consider myself as a people person, always have been. I like to try and make people feel comfortable. If you thought I was inappropriate, say it straight out. Don't beat around the bush. From now on you can deal directly with the Director, he's a Navy 06. I've info'ed him on this email. In fact, I info'ed him on all my emails which you should have done in your responses. I've also info'ed my Boss, a Marine Colonel 06. ---Awesome.
Me to large waitress: "You're really fat!" I was four years old at the time. It was a restaurant in the town that my family has visited every year since 1955. It's also a really great restaurant, and the waitress kept working as the years passed. When I was eight or so, I saw her and asked my mom "Didn't I call her fat once?" She nodded. I was still seeing her when I was 15, and I couldn't help but wonder what was going on in her mind: "Oh, there's that fucker. He's taller now, but he's still a piece of shit. Maybe I should make fun of his braces. Or smother him." At my cousin's wedding last year, the tables were mixed with family and friends of both the bride and groom. I guess it supposed to force us to meet new people. I was sitting at a table with four strangers, and another cousin, who was staggeringly drunk. He had his head down on the table while the other four were engaged in their own conversation. One of the men says, "Well, I could've done worse!" and the other three laugh heartily. My cousin looks up and says "What, like skullfuck your mother?"
I was at a wedding reception last night and was bullshitting with my friends brothers when I discovered an ancient Chinese secret. I can give a definitive answer of yes, that there is always a Chinese person behind you when you go "ching-chang-chong."
This has made it around the internet enough that it's now on snopes, but it's still pretty funny: At my old work we had a paralegal accidentally send his lunch plans to the entire company. Doesn't seem that bad, except that he had done it as a reply to all on a message about a deceased partner's memorial service.
I guess I will share a couple of moments when I was a complete idiot with you guys, just to prove I am a worthy of being a member of a board that boasts it's idiot status. I was confirming a meeting with a doctor (who just so happens to be an extremely attractive and charming guy), and the receptionist said to just give a quick call before I stop by the office "in case he gets tied up", to which my brain (and unfortunately my mouth) said "Yeah, I'd like to tie him up" *awkward pause* then just a laugh and she responds with "you're not the only one honey". She was kind enough not to mention it when I stopped by. and another... I was texting both my boss and a friend at the same time so you can see where this is headed...and this was my boss at a relatively new job (about 4 months) in a new field that is considered to be pretty professional and well respected: Text to boss "I can stop by and see patient A and P if you would like" Response from boss "I would love it if you would" Text back to boss "well, duh" (obviously meant for the other recipient) Now, I can't recall using the words "well, duh" a single time since I learned how to tie my shoes all on my own, but now my boss thinks that this is how I talk in my off time.