July 02, 2008

• Well, the everlasting hope of the inane email sender is that he/she can hit the recall button faster than you can read the wrong information. Recalls are elicited for many reasons. For instance, a successful recall notification indicates that the sender can heave a deep sigh of relief knowing that Mr. Buffoon did NOT actually read the email that *should have* been addressed to Joe Buddy stating that Boss Buffoon was an a$$4*1\ for assigning you to count widgets into little piles. Should the notification come back that the recall was not a success, there's no sense wasting time, just knock over the widget piles, throw your shit into a 4/5 empty Hammermill paper box, and get outta the office for a first in line at the unemployment center. Email recall is a great invention!!
• MonkeyFilter: How do I blot it from my mind; I saw it, and can remember the contents. Hey, it's the internet curse. Just deal. After Daisy_may, I started keeping a bottle of bleach under my desk.
• But this is a business thing; how much do I know?
• Attention: none of this makes any sense.
• It's an Outlook feature. Outlook allows users to recall sent emails - or attempt to. In reality, what most often happens is the scenario which you describe. Everyone reads the original email, then they get the recall notice, and they giggle. The best-case scenario happens when the recall notice is sent while the recipient's Outlook program is actually closed (and the Exchange server is configured correctly). In this case, the email is deleted from the server before the recipient's Outlook can download the original message. When that happens, the recipient simply gets a notice that "this email was recalled by the sender." And the recipient then leans around the cube wall to their neighbor and asks "Hey, what was that recalled email about?" Since everyone ELSE had Outlook open, and read it already. It's an ill-conceived "feature" that's implemented poorly. Go figure. As a side note: this feature can be used for awesome prankage. I know someone who commandeered a coworker's computer while said coworker was away from his desk. The prankster poked through the recipient's in-box until he found a department-wide email. He then hit "reply-all" and replied with "Dude you will not believe it, I just shit my pants! Right here at my desk! WHY DID I EAT THE TACOS???!!!??" He waited thirty seconds (more than enough time for everyone's Outlook to download the message) then sent a recall notice. Reason for recall: "OMG I DIDN'T MEAN REPLY-ALL!!!" People, always lock your computers when you leave your desk.
• (Should I be sad that I totally understood the question, just like last time? This is a disturbing trend.)
• you can't put the toothpaste back in the tube, man.
• OK, you guys are more sterile than i am. How do I deal with this -- I've seen it and I'm going to be asked about it. Never happened. Had some misdirectedc faxes, but shredded them before reading.
• cynnbad: my guess is that you just ignore it. It never happened. It's just an email message, much like the spam we all ignore. There's no way I can see that they'll get to you. Congratulate yourself on being hipper than they are, and sleep well.
• Please forward. Email in profile.
• OK. You're seriously asking us how do you unread what you read. You don't. If someone asks you about it, you can respond in one of two ways: 1. No, I didn't read it. I started to, then realized it was not my business, so I deleted it. 2. Yes, I read it. My lips are sealed. It must be a liability dodge. So how do I deal with the now verboten contents of an email that never existed? It did exist. You could probably print out a copy of this email even if was sent to delete. Open your trash and restore. Print it out, along with the recall request/failure. Is something required of you now that you know what was in the email? If this is something that demands that you take a stand ethically, the ball is now in your court. How do you feel about what was in the email? Would you perjure yourself to agree with 'soandso' that there was no email? With a blanket email recall, this went to more than just you. Will everyone else deny the existence of this email? Does this physically, mentally, emotionally, or financially harm someone? Unless it's on the same level as Iran-Contra or Phillip Morris lies, I wouldn't lose much sleep over it.
• Actually, I like kit's idea. You need to forward it to every Monkey with an email in their profile. Hell, just POST the damn thing and be done with it. Win/win for everyone
• Perhaps you should ask a priest.
• Yeah, we seriously need to know what was in this email now. You can tell us. Go on. Go on. Go on.
• Dear cynnbad, I read your post on monkeyfilter today. That and the stupid responses. JESUS! I can't believe BlueHorse, kitfisto, and Hank were being such assmonkeys. And don't even get me started on path, Queso and mechargue, fuckin' wankers. Still, they don't even add up to the douchebaggery that is Nickdanger. I mean... c'mon... SERIOUSLY?!
• AHH RECALL RECALL RECALL!!!!!!
• THESE ARE NOT THE POSTS YOU ARE LOOKING FOR /waves jedi hand.... Seriously.. if you're going to be asked about it. I would say that you read (or started to) the e-mail, it was recalled, and if they want to know about it, talk to the sender of it. The sender needs to take responsibility for sending something he/she shouldn't have, and you need to realize that you're not responsible for a company e-mail that ends up in your inbox. You are expected to read your company e-mail, and tough noogies for whoever sent it.
• It was full of boobies, wasn't it? O-boy-o-boy-o-boy!
• (o) (o)
• During a recent massive fuck up on the server side of things, several of our individual email addresses were redirected to distribution list. Yep. So, Joe Bagodonuts sends our an email to someone he has sent out email to before a jillion times in the past and BAM! The email is sent to an almost campus-wide distribution list. Thousands of people. Did I mention it had patient data in it? Ow. That email went out on Friday afternoon around 4 PM. I promptly ignored it and deleted it. Monday morning around 9 AM he sent a recall. Uh. Yeah, I admit it. I laughed. I mean, poor guy, it wasn't his fault and all, but come on. 9 AM Monday morning recall of Friday 4 PM email that went to thousands of people? You really should have called the service desk first thing after you found out what happened. They would not have suggested sending a recall for one thing, they would have just turned your call over to the security group and you would have dealt with it like any other breach. The upside is that is was one person's information in the email sent to thousands of employees who know how much trouble they can get in when shit like that happens, so most of them deleted it immediately.
• Was that email about boobies? *taps fingers*
• See, GramMa! Now this *is* a kooky question. Outhouses in India Part II. Just what was in that email, and will we ever figure it out?? Will everyone cry "WHY AGAIN!?" when they see email recall hit the sidebar?? Stay tuned and find out... My personal favorite email fuckup was at an old job. Two higher-levels were bad-mouthing and making fun of a lower-level employee. It was quite a nasty email (to make matters worse, the employee being bad-mouthed was relatively new, was excessively gentle and soft-talking, and had just moved to the US from Japan). One of the higher-levels replied to the other and somehow included the company-wide alias by mistake. Half of the company was laughing, the other half was disgusted by the tone of the email. Me being the "IT Guy", and at the prodding of numerous employees, decided to avert disaster (disaster being this woman reading the email and being "devastated") by logging into her profile and deleting the email before she had a chance to read it. That only made matters worse as everyone else in the company had read the email, and she was extremely confused why so many people were coming up to her and giving words of support and apologies. Needless to say, the email was eventually forwarded to her, and she broke down in tears. She left the month following, and one of the higher-ups ended up leaving as well.
• I work for a large county in Texas, we use Novell Groupwise for email/scheduling stuff. I'm not crazy about it, but I guess it's no worse than Outlook. One of the things that works really really well with it is email recalls. If you bothc a message you can easily see if the message has been displayed or not and, if it hasn't, you can slurp it back out of their inbox without a trace. Handy!
• I have another email account that recently began getting messages from people I don't know from a country I've never been at. Turned out people were leaving out a period on the name and so those were honest mistakes. So there were work documents, event invitations, memos, etc. I contacted the person, no response. Contacted a couple of the people sending the emails, only one answered and still occasionally sends a message. I just filter those and delete them without opening.
• Cynnbad, you miserable little tease! At least give us a HINT!! SMT: In a company with balls, the three would have been called into the CEO. The two assmonkeys* would have been required to provide a private, then public, apology, then either fired, or sanctioned with a pay downgrade. The young woman should have received the CEO's apology as well--preferably over lunch. Of course, that would never happen. Companies prefer the snotty-grubby-little-boy playground atmosphere. Pet peeves: People that can't learn to use a BCC; people that forward crap with everybody-and-their-uncles email addresses included; people that send seven emails a day into my work mailbox instead of combining their comments/inquiries into one concise email; peple that cant. use caps, USE ALL CAPS, spell or punthuate; people that can't delete the previous 70 emails attached--sure, sometimes a trail is necessary, but com'on! summarize if need be. Learn to use the damn email features people! *love that word, 'baser. MonkeyFilter: ASSMONKEYS!!!!
• Oh, did I mention cutsie little animations and dancing smilies? Grrrrrrr.
• MY personal favorite e-mail fuckup - at a software company that I used to work for a recently recruited, highly paid first class bitch of a consultant sent an innocent request to the office manager to get some new business cards printed, and attached a .doc with the proper information for the business cards. Except...wrong .doc was attached. Instead of the business card template, she attached a four page letter she had just finished writing to her headhunter, telling him what a piece of crap this new job had turned out to be, what an idiot and asshole the CEO was, and how he had better get her out of that hellhole pronto. Being a caring and understanding person, the office manager managed to forward copies to several dozen people before running with a hard copy to the CEO, cackling with delight. Ah, good times.
• GramMa: one of the "higher-ups" was essentially forced out of the company due to the email. I think they took that route due to some legal issues vs. an outright firing (I wasn't involved in that process, so I really have no idea what really went down). The other "higher up" did send an apology. She had a more "cushy" seat being that she was a Director, and her husband was a partner of the firm. Aaack! Still, I never looked at her the same after that incident. The said company lacked balls. Hence, I am no longer with them.
• And then the business cards came back reading: Jane Doe Employee of an Idiot and Asshole
• I started getting emails to a completely different tracyh recently, from lots of different people which makes me think she'd given it out wrong. I sent the first couple back a message saying "Woops, sorry, but I'm not her" but then just started deleting. Come to think of it, I haven't had any more in a couple of weeks.
• Cynnbad, I guess your situation doesn't really speak to me because I've spent about 10 years as a sysadmin. As with doctors and lawyers, dealing with private, confidential data is my stock in trade. Not telling people what I've seen is one of my biggest job qualifications. I've essentially been in your situation all day every day since about 1998. Trust me, it's no big deal. Are you sure you're going to be asked about it? Who's going to ask you? Why will they ask YOU and not someone else? Based on the information you have provided, I doubt this scenario will happen. The person who recalled the email is resting secure in their belief that the emails were all recalled. Based on my many years of corporate experience, I can pretty much guarantee that the entire company has moved on and forgotten about the whole thing by now. They're pretending you didn't see what you saw, and you can safely pretend the same. If there's more to this story, perhaps some relevant details that you think might affect the answers you're getting, please feel free to provide them! Also, we are curious. Thx.
• So, Joe Bagodonuts .... Good old Joe Bagodonuts. Always wondered what happened to him. Still waiting to hear from Bakey Cakefiend and Caramel Cookiehead though... how time flies.
• I still get email in my personal account that is intended for someone with the same name, but obviously has A LOT more money than I do (lots of "thank you" notes from the Jaguar dealership in Newport Beach, CA; financial records for the firm on which this person is a Trustee; Happy Birthday! greetings each year - - oh, I guess that part is kinda nice actually! My emails back to senders have gone ignored...)
• Now I'm hungry for donuts.
• Happy Birthday! greetings each year But SMT, are the greetings on your birthday? If so maybe someone just stole your identity... (and then went and bought a Jag)
• Now I'm hungry for donuts. Now I'm hungry for a BAG of donuts....
• assmonkey
• You guys are a raucous as I remember you, bless your hearts.
• *is waiting for a copy of teh email*
• How can you be raucous in text?
• Boy, y'all are suspicious. But I did notice something yesterday.....
• My tight buns, I'll wager. Naughty.
• *email inbox is still empty*
• Friend of a friend reports best misdirected, went-to-everyone-oops email ever, in its entirety: "They're just like regular warts except on the vagina."
• Last year I signed up at university for a meeting to discuss a new student management system. The available times went out to about 200 students and I always use the university's webmail for things relating to uni. I didn't notice that hitting "reply" automatically replied to all and sent some inane thing like "I'll be at the 9am meeting" to all. That was okay; you'd think people would ignore, delete and move on, but I got four abusive emails from people.
• Mark my words, some assheaded email will cause the next nuclear war.
• Monkeyfilter: you'd think people would ignore, delete and move on.
• ... and you would be wrong.
• Yah, I got a one to tell, too. Got an email from the university warning us to be cautious in our web use--protect passwords, don't give out addresses to just anyone, yadda yadda. ~And~ since the idiot that drafted it didn't bother to use BCC, everyone got the 2000+ email addys for all registered users on campus. Spam delight!! Email: Dangerous in the wrong hands!
• MonkeyFilter: Just like regular warts except on the vagina. why no one else had done this yet, i have no idea (*ahem* i'm lookin' at you, GramMa)
  
• *la la la la la la* I can't hear you cheese-breath!