Adventures in "Reply to All" (NSR)

Have you ever hit "reply to all" and then said, "OHHHHHHHHSHITOHSHITOHSHIT?!!!"?

This a.m. a board president called me for advice because another board member had made him furious. We talked about how he should handle the situation, and then he bcc'd me on his email message to the offending board member. I replied with the comment "Well said—firm but professional, and très presidential!"...but accidentally hit "reply to all" so my message went to the offending board member as well as a host of people the sender had bcc'd, embarrassingly tipping them all off to the fact the board pres had sought my advice. Fortunately for me, he was incredibly gracious when I called 20 seconds later to alert/apologize to him for the mistake.

In other news, a week ago a client of mine caught her business ex-partner badmouthing her via email when a recipient of the slanderous message inadvertently copied my client in a response that included the original thread. So I feel like I got off easy this morning.

But I'm sure you can top either of those stories...

Try to recall the message...

Wow....ouch for him having to deal with the fallout of that. I like phonecalls.

Nothing that bad here.

I'm currently working as a still-to-graduate mechanical engineer at a large aerospace company. There are about 60 other people in my position (halfway through college) and some of them are cool, some of them are not. Actually, given the state of engineers these days, most of them are not. A guy sent out a joke email with a hoist he had designed that looked way too much like a penis and testicles.

I meant to reply to him asking if he had square testicles (attachment points were square) and if the thing was life-sized. Accidentally replied to all of the other people on the email (many of these aforementioned toolbags). Within half an hour I had 10 emails reprimanding me for non-professional email use. F'em.

Okay, so that was a pretty crappy story, here's the topper: These people pay me $22 an hour to sit around and work 3 hours a day (out of 8 that I'm here) assisting the full-timers. I'm doing this for 8 months and then taking a nice skiing motivated roadtrip. Baa-zing!

Has a message ever succesfully been recalled?

Man have I got stories. I'm lazy so i'll summarize.

At one property I was interning at 2 summers ago, the IT department sent an e-mail warning employees that there old email adresses (new domain name) would no longer work after the end of the month. A rather upset gentlemen hit reply to all on accident wiht his very very VERY angry, childish rant. Ooops.

Another similar thing: We have a group set up at work for all Nevada employees of my company (about 9,000 people). A gentlemen accidentally sent a very innapropriate joke out to 9000 people. We heard later that he was fired within 20 minutes :)

I have done that. With the entire thread imbedded in message.

It causes some sort term problems but sometimes is forgotten. Does it do more harm to you or the person you were replying to?

Good luck.

Another forum I frequent has a thread called "The Company Wide Email Thread" or something like that, where people post bad "reply alls". Pretty funny...

One time, I sent one of "those" emails to a girlfriend of mine, commenting on an email that I guy I was interested in had sent me. She replied to me & the guy (dingbat! because he wasn't in the to or cc).

That killed his interest quickly! It was tough dealing with that fallout, but I learned my lesson. I don't BCC anymore and if I forward something sensitive I remove all email references except my own.

At the firm I used to work at local IT always maintained that recalling messages was not possible.

One day a very senior partner sent a snippy little message about an ill-timed announcement that he was excluded from to another very senior partner who sent the original announcement but he cc'd ~15,000 people on it.

That message evaporated very quickly from even already opened mailboxes :)

oh and I compose my posts in email and have accidentally copied them into word/email docs that I'm working on :o talk about embarrassing.

Several years ago, I once accidentally pasted a quote from Superstar Punani (in his Ahnold mode) into the middle of an email. Not even sure how it happened, but I ended up sending a business email with something about "crush your face, girly man" to a Salomon marketing guy, with my boss cc'ed. It was very hard to explain. :confused:

After removing foot from mouth one too many times, came up with the following solution...though it only works if you have a program like outlook. You can set a lag in the delivery time -- mine is 3 minutes I think, but you could set it for as much as you want -- that autmoatically holds shit up. you can always manually send it by pressing the send/receive button, but this pause has bailed me out three times a week at minimum from either replying to the wrong person, or saying shit that i shouldn't.

aLONG THESE SAME LINES, i GOT AN EMAIL LAST WEEK THAT WAS WRITTEN LIKE THIS. i'M NOT SURE HOW THE GUY WRITING IT DIDN'T REALIZE WHAT HE WAS DOING. yOU WOULD THINK PEOPLE WOULD PROOF READ OR AT LEAST LOOK AT THE MONITOR WHEN THEY'RE TYPING. aPPARENTLY THIS GUY DOESN'T THOUGH.

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Originally Posted by The Reverend Floater

Several years ago, I once accidentally pasted a quote from Superstar Punani (in his Ahnold mode) into the middle of an email. Not even sure how it happened, but I ended up sending a business email with something about "crush your face, girly man" to a Salomon marketing guy, with my boss cc'ed. It was very hard to explain. :confused:

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fucking awesome job Rev! KUDOS!

I had a hispanic friend who was on an email list for hispanic engineering students, but wasn't really a part of the group. A friend of his was the president of that group and sent out an email to the list announcing an upcoming meeting. My friend responded (keep in mind that he is himself hispanic) with something to the effect that "spicks are too stupid to be engineers anyway" as a joke, but accidently hit the infamous reply all. Needless to say he had some explaining to do.

I belong to a hiking group with approx 400 members, and before we got all hi-tech and shit they would send the weekly email with all the addresses on the 'TO:' line.

One day I get two emails from some chick in the group. The second email's title is 'PLEASE, PLEASE DISCARD THE PREVIOUS EMAIL! DON'T READ IT!'.

She then goes on to say how she didn't mean to reply to all balh-blah-blah...

So now I am intrigued and I go to the previous email that starts with: 'I cannot believe you had sex with your cousin!'. :biggrin: :biggrin: :biggrin:

It got even better from there! I don't remember the details but she was dating some other dude in the group (for bonus fun points I personally know both these people) and his female cousin (yeah, REAL cousin) was visiting him from out of town and staying at his place. So nature takes it's couse :confused: and the 'girlfriend' finds out the hard way and is SOOO pissed she types this furious email and sends it to 400 people she knows!!!!!

I laughed for days. The cousin-fucker is a tough man though because he showed his face at the next meeting like nothing happened! She dissapeared for a very very loong time after that day.

When I started a job five years ago, the default configuration for Outlook was that if you hit "reply", it would "reply to all". So we got a lot of these things sent around all the time. It got pretty annoying, and I finally talked the sysadmin into changing it.

The one I recall was a guy who replied to an HR notice about insurance options. He asked them if it would cover some embarrassing disease. Everybody got it. Nobody mentioned it ever again, though.

This is not specifically a reply all but BIG email goof for the company I work for. We send out about a million emails a day tracking market data changes. We also send out analyst reports and such that admin's can come in and author themselves and send out to users. Of course we have to test our systems so we hand it off to a tester who rights up a couple fake stock reports and sends them out complete with a fake picture of analyst etc. One day our test systems crossed paths with our real systems and a phony analyst report went out with MY PICTURE and name on it to a few thousand folks. Some of you might have even gotten this and I don't really look the part of an analyst. Anyways I got a big chuckle out of it but the client wasn't too happy.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by The Reverend Floater

Several years ago, I once accidentally pasted a quote from Superstar Punani (in his Ahnold mode) into the middle of an email. Not even sure how it happened, but I ended up sending a business email with something about "crush your face, girly man" to a Salomon marketing guy, with my boss cc'ed. It was very hard to explain. :confused:

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Now that is classic.


And also, not really relevent to this thread, but I haven't been able to figure out what the hell "NSR" means. Anybody care to fill me in?

Not Ski Related.

edg

No Smartass Responses

Not Skiing Related

edit: damn you edg

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Originally Posted by leroy jenkins

And also, not really relevent to this thread, but I haven't been able to figure out what the hell "NSR" means. Anybody care to fill me in?

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Just to clarify for this JONG, Roo's answer is right.

That is a serious Jong question for someone that has >700 posts.







Ya, I'm bored and ready to leave the office to watch Germany v Argentina and have a few pint, hence the heckling

I don't have any really juicy reply all but I have messed up with instant messaging a few times. We use IM alot at work to talk between co-workers. I had one window opened to my buddy and another opened up to a female project manager. Unfrotuantly I sent the link to some nice porn(found through the padded room) to the project manager. I had to run in to her office and say "Don't click that link!" Doh!

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Originally Posted by pde20

You can set a lag in the delivery time

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As far as I know recalling messages only works with exchange servers, not when you've sent a message to someone's personal ISP. I like the delay option...I didn't know there was a compromise between having to send messages manually and having them go out instantly. Certainly would have saved my fool arse this morning.

BTW the board member has apologized to the board pres and neither is putting heat on me for being an asshat, so I've got that much going for me.

I'm pretty good about to/cc/bcc, but SMS on the other hand...

I've stayed friends with my ex's, so it wouldn't be unusual to send a friendly SMS their way, but several times I've accidentally sent suggestive (or blatant) messages intended for a current girlfriend to an ex by mistake. I don't know whether it's more embarrassing when I get an affirmative response or no response. :eek:

Worse still is when a normal message for someone else gets sent to a current girlfriend... it's practically guaranteed to arouse suspicion when taken completely out of context.

By far the worst is when an SMS that should ONLY be seen by it's intended recipient gets sent to mom's #... Definitely the worst.

I have done that Monique, precisely once. It was a situation similar to yours only among friends rather than work associates. Needless to say I walked around with a red face for several weeks afterwards. Now, I am sooooo carefull when I reply to an email.

yeah...to the head of a company, but the message went out to all in the company and the engineer i mention....."the engineer is so anal"

I can't think of anything that I've personally done, but here's something a friend of mine did...

Also, I thought about a girl I used to date. She was writing a personal email to a friend...her name was something like "Debbie." Right next to her name on the contacts list is "Department Employees" or something. So, she accidentally clicked on "Department Employees" instead of Debbie, and not realizing her error. Instead of just Debbie getting the email, all of her coworkers in her department recieved an email about her weekend in where she tried cocaine (or some other drug - I forget) and hooked up with her brother's buddy that night. Oops.

Ok... Time to head out for Mammoth! Woo Hoo!

I no longer send out e-mails because I no longer have any friends. :redface: