Did you ever type up an email to a friend of colleague with less than flattering words about someone else?
Oh come on, I’m sure you did!
“John, did you see Mary the receptionists hair today, OMG what was she thinking? She looks like one of the Muppets!”
“Sally, I went on a date with Pete from finance last night. The guy is a complete moron. He has bad breath, can’t kiss if his life depended on it and had really bad body odor, what a loser!”
99.9% of the time your email reaches the intended recipient and all is well. But what happens when the email you just sent falls into that 0.1% category called, “whoops”?
If you’re Luzerne County Commissioner Maryanne Petrilla, that whoops email just landed you a spot on the front page of the two local newspapers.
Maryanne wanted to vent about County Controller Walter Griffith to a coworker via email. So she typed up the following:
“How bout this “run-on” email. Didn’t he ever have a teacher in school who spoke of “run-on” sentences. He as “run-on and on and on and on” sentences. Plus he says the same thing at least three times in ever email. He’s email are “redumbnant” rather than “redundant”
I spoke to other board members. We agree that he’s a Hump. I wish he would just go change someone’s oil and leave me alone.
Don’t let him browbeat you. He doesn’t have the votes to get rid of you. I already did my due diligence on that. 🙂
Thanks, M”
Her biggest mistake? She sent it to Walter Griffith, the very person she was ranting about.
Not to be a nitpicker, but Maryanne, there are some grammar and spelling errors in there that you should have caught before you hit send. But then again, I think you have bigger things to worry about…. like making sure you put the correct person in the To: field.
I happen to use Gmail for all my email. There’s a little known option in there that allows you to delay sending an email for a set number of seconds. This way if you hit that send button and see something is wrong or you have a change of heart, you can just click cancel and voila, nothing sent! It has come in handy for me a couple of times.
Maybe Maryanne should do her due diligence on that.