I Hit Reply All to Four Thousand People

It was my third day. I did not yet understand that the company had a single mailing list that reached every employee on three continents, and that it was named almost exactly like my new work friend Dave.

Dave had sent me a company-wide announcement about the annual charity bake sale. I typed back a private reply that was, I thought, a very funny observation about our director and his well-known obsession with a particular brand of protein bar. It had a joke, it had his name, and — because I was rushing — it had a spectacular typo that turned an innocent word into something much less innocent.

I hit send. The little confirmation appeared. Then my screen filled up. Not with one reply from Dave. With out-of-office auto-responses. Dozens. Then hundreds. From offices I had never heard of, in time zones I could not place. I had sent my private joke about the director, with the unfortunate typo, to four thousand people, including the director.

I sat very still. My friend Dave leaned over the divider, looked at his screen, looked at me, and said only, "Oh no."

The recall function did nothing, because half the company had already read it on their phones. My manager walked over slowly. I was sure I was fired on day three.

Instead, the director replied all himself, thirty minutes later, with a single line: "For the record, they are peanut butter flavour, and the intern is correct about me." The whole company laughed. I became known, for two years, as protein-bar guy. I still work there. Dave and I are still friends. I have never once hit reply all again without reading the address three times.