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[dr_prephd]

I am thoroughly embarassed. 

I am at home, catching up on emails to teachers & students.  My email server operates differently on my home computer than the one at work.  Let's say the address book entry for teachers is "Group" and the address book entry for students is "Group_Group."  While these two look very different in the address book as it's displayed at work, they appear similar displayed on the computer at home.

Doh!

So, yes, long story short, I inadvertently sent an email that was intended for teachers to the students... and one of the emails referenced a student!  I immediately sent out a "priority" email to the recipients asking for their forgiveness for my studpidity and asking them to delete the email. 

Admittedly, and thankfully, there was nothing damning, snarky, or confidential in the emails, but I still feel very embarassed and a bit unprofessional.  I use the BC function for students, but for teachers, I don't, which means everyone's email is out there for everyone to see!  Perhaps I should start BC'ing everyone.

In the spirit of Halloween, care to share email horror stories?  Even if just to assuage my guilt and embarassment? 

[prof_mom]

Oh, I have several such stories. This one happened in the  days of telnet email, where it was  sometimes difficult to see the 'to'  line once you  were done typing the message.

Lesson: always check and double-check the to line before sending!!!

---
In arrives snarky  message  from post doc in our lab. He is lab  manager. I am Ph.D. student in lab. He is an ass and I am, well, me. He is being his usual snarky self.

I start  the reply:
Dear snarkypostdoc,

As Dr. Labdirector  has  mentioned, this project is no longer a priority. I have been assigned to another project and will not work on that anymore.

(I realize he will just get snarkier so I decide to just forward  the message to Dr. Labdirector  to   let him  reply).

Dr. Labdirector, I started sending this message to snarkypostdoc, but I realize he will just not listen to me.  His tone is rude and his comments are becoming increasingly personal and hostile. As we discussed, I do not see  any value in continuing to interact directly with him. Will you  please communicate to him that I am not on that project and ask him to be a little nicer? I  appreciate your willingness to remove me from the project and your sensitivity in noticing snarkiness in his interactions with me.

(I  hit send before I realized I had not edited the "to" line. It went directly to the postdoc. He was not happy. No, I did not use the word snarky, but you get the idea).

Mine might be a little worse, no?

[larryc]

In some email programs you can "take back" a sent email if the recipient has not yet opened it.  I know this works in GroupWise, though perhaps only for other GroupWise users.

[comp1]

I received an email from someone who then sent a second email requesting a "recall" on the first (which had a few typos in it). I wouldn't have minded sending the first email back if I had known how to.

[csguy]

I received an email from someone who then sent a second email requesting a "recall" on the first (which had a few typos in it). I wouldn't have minded sending the first email back if I had known how to.

Right. Recalling messages only works within particular mail system for people on such systems. I get them now and again as well. It's best to not get in the habit of doing so.

Return receipt requests are annoying too.

[dr_prephd]

larryc, you are my savior!  I'm in groupwise!  I owe you big time! 

Now, I can only hope that not many people opened their mail, since I sent out the note on a Friday night. 

[dark_globe]

One colleague at my college sent an email concerning a confidential matter about another colleague to the entire faculty once.

[doctormommy]

This is a second hand story that is so horrifying it is worth mentioning.

A former editor of a major journal told me this story. She had to reject an article, and did so by email. She started getting a series of threatening sounding emails from the authors calling her all sorts of terrible things. The tone was getting worse and she was getting a bit nervous and wondering if she would have to call the police. Finally she replied to one of the emails just saying something to the effect of "May I assume you won't be submitting anything to this journal in the future" or something like that. 

Well, it turns out that the group was just having a group venting session. The editor had emailed all the authors her rejection and the genious who had started the group vent wrote a nasty comment and then just hit the "reply all" and didn't bother to remove the editor's email from the "to" list. Then all the geniouses who continued the venting must have assumed the editor's email wasn't on the "to" list and just didn't check. OOOPS!!

[drdirt55]

Emails can get you in trouble at the speed of light - faster even than your mouth - and there is a record of your placing your foot into your electronic mouth.  YUCK!!!

The message recall function only works if receipiants haven't opened the message -  my experience.  My system gives me a message - hey idiot, you got lucky, Suzy Smith hadn't yet opened the note you sent. OR hey idiot, you're screwed, Suzy Smith opened her note before you tried to recall it - hahahaha!

[zenprof]

Ok, folks, I AM NOT making this up. This actually happened. To me. In 2001, and I am still laughing about it.

My ex-husband had cheated on me outrageously (and worse, lied and lied about it, could never come clean even to himself, it seems).  Several years after the protracted and hideous divorce, we were in only sporadic contact, living on separate continents and only in email touch. One day in my inbox, from him, came a note with no subject line. I opened it, thinking it would be a financial document or something, but found a passionate declaration of, er, love, I guess; certainly lust, complete with descriptions of lingerie and what would be happening the next time he saw me...
(found out later that the latest girlfriend's email and mine begin with the same several letters, and those auto-complete boxes had helped him do this...)
Then, in rapid succession, a series of "recall" emails flashed up in the inbox--showing he had clearly realized the mistake and was trying desperately to recall the message beofre I opened it.
Hehhh. No go. 
I would like to be able to say I took the high road, but I could not resist sending back an email--"Oh, my! It's been YEARS since you've talked to me like that!  I think you have the wrong lingerie--I do not own a pair of {not sure I'm allowed to name this item here} but certainly, bring yours along--I'm sure they look super on you--and let's play Antony and Cleopatra...we don't have to let [new girlfriend's name] know, do we? Or should we invite her, too? I'll just forward this to her..."  [of course I didn't do that] 

He did not reply, but I saved the email.

In a professional context, my colleagues frequently send out personal msgs to our dept list (I've done that too) but it's usually harmless enough. Not always, but I don't recall any really awful cases.

That one from the ex will last me a lifetime of giggles.
z
 

[dark_globe]

I've learned that there is this device on my desk called a "telephone." I can talk to someone about a confidential matter and be certain that I am in fact speaking to the person I intended. Additionally, my statements cannot be forwarded. Fancy that.

Now, the most confidential email I ever send is "please call me at your earliest convenience."

[prytania3]

I've learned that there is this device on my desk called a "telephone." I can talk to someone about a confidential matter and be certain that I am in fact speaking to the person I intended. Additionally, my statements cannot be forwarded. Fancy that.

Now, the most confidential email I ever send is "please call me at your earliest convenience."

But it makes that awful ringing sound!

[j_source]

Several years ago I opened up an email addressed to me, jsource, that I thought was from a relative.   It read something like "Hi J, your mom and I miss you. .."  It went on to talk about a short trip they planned to take to X  and something about an event in his practice, all of which  was right on target.  Except that my father had died 20 years before. I was, to say the least, puzzled but proud of the old boy for learning how to use email in the great beyond.  I looked at the sender's name more closely and it was msource, my father's first initial and last name.  Then I realized it was from my brother whose email name would also be msource.  His daughter's email address at college would have been be jsource with a different domain name. M_source had selected the wrong addressee.  Just a boring solution to what I thought was a Twilight Zone moment. 

[anthroid]

Oh, boy, do I have the email to end all emails.

It was later on in the evening, three or so years before I earned tenure at Mildly Obnoxious Jesus College 'n' Education Emporium (job before this one).  Education Division chair had gone on and on and on and on and on and on at some meeting--a faculty meeting, I think--about how important we "content specialists" were for the college.  Ooh, we content specialists (e.g., professors with Ph.D.s in actual disciplines) were irritated.  So I was on the phone with several colleagues throughout the evening, imbibing just a bit as we felt the Ed.D. Takeover coming closer and closer, shivering in anticipation.  Emboldened by last colleague (who, by the way, would never publicly say anything she declared privately but sure egged me on to be the mouthpiece), I began composing an email to the faculty, planning to save it as "draft," knowing that, though I did want to say something, I wanted to think it over.  The email had to do, as I recall, with how the education division was causing all of the college to become even more mediocre than it already was.  I went on for a while.  I hit "send", not "save as draft."

Ooops.

That took a while to live down.  I did, however, earn tenure regardless, and the email was read, actually, as a strong statement of principle and rigor by most people.

I wish I hadn't sent it, though!

[cc_alan]

While I was in grad school a professor died of a heart attack. I don't remember hearing anyone say anything bad about him and when I was picking an advisor, I talked him. Great professor, great person. Much admired.

He work in computational chemistry and about a week after he died I had logged in to the network and I did a check to see who was logged in and what jobs were running. This is what I saw:

Dr. MuchAdmired logged in from: unknown

It was a very cool and slightly spooky moment. A buddy of mine was in the lab that evening so I have a witness! Imagine being so concerned about your work that you would log in from "the beyond" to see how things were going.

Alan

Several years ago I opened up an email addressed to me, jsource, that I thought was from a relative.   It read something like "Hi J, your mom and I miss you. .."  It went on to talk about a short trip they planned to take to X  and something about an event in his practice, all of which  was right on target.  Except that my father had died 20 years before. I was, to say the least, puzzled but proud of the old boy for learning how to use email in the great beyond.  I looked at the sender's name more closely and it was msource, my father's first initial and last name.  Then I realized it was from my brother whose email name would also be msource.  His daughter's email address at college would have been be jsource with a different domain name. M_source had selected the wrong addressee.  Just a boring solution to what I thought was a Twilight Zone moment.