People Got Caught In A Reply-All Email Chain With Indigo Books And Their Reactions Were Hilarious

"If Indigo hired me, this wouldn't have happened."

A bunch of people who applied to work at Indigo got caught in a bonkers reply-all email thread due to the company's IT screwup.

Simon Wilson / PR Direct

On July 31, the book retailer sent an email to people who had previously applied to work for the company.

"Within the last 12 months, you applied for a job at Indigo and we need your help! We want to know more about what your experience was like as a candidate," the company stated in the email, which included a link to an online survey.

Shaelyn Mortensen was one of the people who received the message. She had applied to work at an Indigo location in Newmarket, Ontario, earlier in the year, but she hadn't thought much about the company since.

"It sketched me out at first. I wasn't going to click the survey anyway," she told BuzzFeed Canada.

The email said that Indigo was looking for honest responses, "so we decided to keep things anonymous!" But as Mortensen quickly discovered, Indigo had inadvertently made her part of a massive email conversation that soon flooded her inbox with dozens of messages from strangers.

"I started getting email after email after email," she said.

A lot of people were really annoyed that Indigo was bothering them, and they let the company know.

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But the angry replies just compounded the problem.

While Indigo had not included individual email addresses, a mailing list specifically for the survey had been put in the "To" field, so each reply-all spammed everyone else who had received the original message.

"Everyone is getting everyone else's emails. This is crazy."

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People were furious at Indigo for not taking their privacy seriously.

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"Indigo - this is upsetting," this person said. "Our private emails have just been leaked."

"Whom do I contact to pursue legal action for the emotional stress caused by Indigo leaking my email?" one person asked in the thread.

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Several others also threatened legal action, according to screenshots shared with BuzzFeed Canada.

Others used the opportunity to grow their follower count.

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And demand gift cards as compensation.

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It continued like this for a long time.

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The reply-all email chain grew to more than 60 messages before it stopped.

Kate Gregory, a spokeswoman for Indigo, said the company deactivated the mailing list after they realized the screwup.

"The privacy and protection of our customer information is of utmost importance to Indigo," she said.

No survey responses were shared with anyone else on the email thread, she said, and only those who chose to reply-all made their emails publicly visible.

"We are treating this matter very seriously, and sincerely apologize for this error and the inconvenience it has caused," Gregory said.

It's unclear if Indigo got any worthwhile survey responses, but this email pretty much encapsulates the general mood.

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As for Mortensen, she said she found the whole thing pretty funny — and it was a good reminder that she'd probably dodged a bullet.

"I found employment elsewhere," she said. "I'm very glad I'm not working there."