Weekend 3-Way: Whoops!

Remember my friend Christine? The one who sent me this email, which was the basis of our weekend 3-way Halloween candy discussion? Well. After I received that email from her, I received this one:

Hey Ellie,

I just got this e-mail sent back to me from someone at work (I must have cc'd her by accident because I was looking up her phone number) letting me know that I sent it to her by accident. How embarrassing! At least she's a nice person...Good thing all I was talking about was candy...So there's another idea for your blog discussions. E-mails accidentally sent to the wrong people....

Christine

Seems to me Christine was a wee bit distracted by all the candy she had hoarded saved up for Halloween, and was paying not enough attention to whom she was sending emails.

And it also seems to me it's a good thing for Christine. Because I never have to think of topics for the Weekend 3-Ways I'm in charge of anymore.
(Hey Christine! I need an idea for December 5!)

So. Let's hear it. Emails accidentally sent to the wrong people. Dish it.

Ellie:
Well, I have one. A terrible one. An awful one. I was going on a business trip to Miami with my boss Deborah, as was our wont. I wrote an email to my friend Denise, complaining about Deborah and how she was driving me crazy and we had to do everything together when we went away together and I wish I could get some peace from her. And then I sent the email. To Deborah. Whoops! I mean, it wasn't an email about Halloween candy, it was an email about Deborah. And a bad one. We made up, eventually, but it has scarred me for life.

Jacquie:
My most frequent e-mail faux pas happen whenever my family tries to make me keep a secret. (Just in case you are wondering, faux pas is the plural of faux pas, but when you use it as a plural, you pronounce the s! I looked it up). As I was saying, my e-mail screw ups are usually a family affair. We try to be really obvious and careful by making the subject really obvious and gigantic in caps, like "SISTERS ONLY" or "READ AND THEN DELETE" or the most frequently used: "DO NOT FORWARD TO ELLIE!" And I get nervous whenever we try something like this, because I always ruin it. Most notably, there was the time I ruined mom's 70th 40th birthday surprise in the final hours before we could have pulled it off. We had all secretly made plans to travel to Chicago, mom knew that I would be there but she had no idea that we were going six for six. I kept it together until I was actually at Jane's house, and then I wrote a cheerful e-mail to my family, including the birthday girl, who was mere hours away from leaving for the airport, to say that I had arrived and I was so excited for everyone to start arriving, the Westy could pull up at any minute! A few seconds later, there was a desperate email from MB that pointed out my boneheaded mistake, and I think I literally slapped my own face and let out a chagrined Homer-esque "DOH!" I tried to fix it, I called dad and talked him through the steps of accessing mom's email to find and delete the culprit, but it was hopeless. God, it still irritates the hell out of me that I did that. Sorry, family.

Beth:
Well I have been searching and searching for what is probably the most embarrassing email faux pas I've made, but I cannot seem to locate it via any search I've tried. Actually Jacquie was the one who tipped me off to my mistake. Somehow, and I'm still not sure how or why this happened, I sent an email, one reply of a very long email chain between me and my now husband, the entirety of which was blessedly NOT sent, to one of the preschool teachers that worked for Jacquie at the time.

The teacher was very confused and actually approached Jacquie to tell her, saying something like, "the email mentioned both dogshit and quickies; I don't think it was intended for me."

Probably not, Lulu. And sorry!

But because I cannot locate the hilarious details (because I do realize the above does not come across as funny or mortifying), I'll relate another very bad email mistake I made, years ago, at work.

At the publishing company I work for we have hundreds of authors that write for us plus an editorial board of approximately 40 people. We try to keep these editorial board members happy and we're always very solicitous and helpful when communicating with them. However, some of them are a pain in the ass. One in particular was requiring more than his fair share of attention, and I was very un-professionally attempting to forward his most recent ludicrous email to my co-worker. I had, of course, pointed out all the annoying things about the email, and added more comments about his overall demeanor before hitting REPLY instead of FORWARD. Oh Shit!!

I knew I was done for, even though I frantically attempted to retrieve the email using some Microsoft function that never works.

I then had to fess up to my boss, because the editor had every right to tell him what a little shit I was. Luckily, my boss laughed and told me I'd have to dig my way out by myself if he ever replied to the email. Which he did not. He did not!!