We recently asked the BuzzFeed Community about their embarrassing email horror stories. Here are some of the most cringeworthy submissions:
1. The medical mistake:
"I was sending an email to my mother about some tests I had to have done. I tried to 'blind carbon copy' my friend, but I accidentally BCC-ed my entire office...and my email ended with: 'So basically they are going up my butt and down my throat.' About five seconds went by and I suddenly heard laughing coming from my boss, and then a secretary came around the corner laughing and said, 'Oh Carrie, you didn't want to do that!' And then I started getting emails from people saying, 'I don't think you meant for this to go to me.' Thank God I have a great sense of humor (and so did my office of 500+ people)."
—Carrie Sweeney, Facebook
2. The Freudian slip:
"I was emailing my college advisor to make sure I was on track to graduate. At the end of the email I typed, 'Just wanted to make sure I’ve got all my ducks in a row!' ...or so I thought. What I actually wrote: 'Just wanted to make sure I’ve got all my dicks in a row!'"
3. The cannabis cover letter:
"I was applying for a lot of different jobs when I first moved to LA — many of which were in the cannabis industry. So, I had a variety of cover letters I was sending out on any given day depending on the industry that job was in, and one of them included a gushing statement about my passion for weed and all things weed-related. I must have crossed wires at some point, and ended up sending a lot of non-weed companies this cover letter by mistake. I just imagine Jill in HR looking at that letter and wondering why I was advertising my enthusiasm for weed, like I am trying to convince them not to hire me. Oops."
4. The cocktail cover letter:
"At the end of senior year of college when I was looking for a job, I was connected with an alum of my college who worked at a company I was interested in. We spoke on the phone and got along (not romantically at all, but just got along well). We realized I worked at a college bar he frequented. So, at the end of my cover letter I put a comment like, 'Next time you’re at [name of bar], I’ll buy you a drink.' Innocuous enough, except I forgot to delete that comment from the HUNDREDS of other cover letters I sent out."
—PHM8
5. The nuts:
6. The nice butt:
"After a work event a few years ago, I was in charge of sending thank-you emails to each volunteer who had helped out. My best friend had volunteered, so I sent her an email saying, ‘Thanks so much for helping. P.S. I like your butt’ — just because we’re weird like that. I then went on to forward the SAME email I sent my friend to another volunteer, completely forgetting that I’d included ‘I like your butt’ in the email."
7. The wiener smell:
8. The Bachelor contestant:
"I was contacted for an interview for an Ivy League school, so I looked the interviewer up on Facebook. They were spicy hot, so I decided to make a meme and Photoshop their face onto a poster for the next season of The Bachelor and sent it to my friends. Flash forward to me emailing the interviewer to set up a date and time to meet for the interview in which I attached what I thought was my contact information at the bottom and pressed send. What I ACTUALLY attached was the .png of his face that I had gotten off his Facebook. The interview was awkward to say the least, and I did not get accepted to that school."
9. The betch:
"My boss needed me to put in a work order for a repair on a wheelchair used during one of our events. He replies to the lady requesting the repair, Mary Beth, with: 'Thanks, Mary Betch.' No apologies. No fucks given."
10. The accidental (but necessary, TBH) attachment:
"Around the time I was about to graduate I was applying for jobs on Indeed. A few weeks passed and I was wondering why I wasn’t getting any calls. Turns out, instead of attaching my reference list, I had been attaching a bibliography for my research paper saved on my desktop as 'References.' So, about 30 companies got a document with a list of articles and books on women being sexually harassed in the workplace (I was a sociology major)."
11. The autocorrect affection:
"I was emailing back and forth with a potential employer about a job opportunity, and my autocorrect decided to change 'I hope you have a lovely week' to 'I LOVE you have a lovely week.' It must have worked because he asked to meet me the next day at 9:30."
—Ashley Kleptz, Facebook
12. The do:
13. The new nickname:
"While we used Outlook to email external applicants, customers, etc., we used a crappy DOS-like internal email interface from the '80s (but with ~color~). One day, I'm sending out a status update to the entire department, including the director, and I do my usual closing. Or, so I thought. Instead of 'Many thanks, Christy,' I typed, 'Many thanks, Chrusty.'
Guess what my new nickname was?"
14. The satanic parents:
"When I was a teacher, I sent out a reminder email to my third graders’ parents that started with 'Hell Parents' instead of 'Hello Parents.'”
15. The brutally honest file:
"In high school I was taking an English class at the local college, and didn’t super-duper understand how naming Word docs and sending email attachments went. I ended up naming the file of one of my papers 'Stupid Idiot English Paper That’s Ruining my Life,' thinking that I was the only one who would see that part. Needless to say, the professor responded that she had received the stupid idiot English paper that was ruining my life. I stuck to boring file names after that."
16. The devilish username:
17. The bad breath breakdown:
"My dad once had this coworker who had the stinkiest breath ever. He finally couldn’t take it anymore and decided to create a fake email account to anonymously let him know about his problem. He created the account, sent the email (which, because it was supposed to be anonymous, wasn’t particularly tactful) and was feeling pretty proud of himself — until he realized he’d accidentally sent it from his own account. The next morning he went to the guy’s office to apologize and found him sitting at his desk with a straight face and about 10 packs of mints."
Submissions have been edited for length/clarity.