You accidentally hit Reply All–and everyone received an uncensored rant about your boss. Write the follow-up Reply All.
I’ve always wondered how many careers were sunk by the ubiquitous ‘Reply All’ and ‘Auto-fill’ features of Microsoft Outlook. I know of at least two emails in my employment that were sent to people who I didn’t not want to read the contents. It didn’t end badly, but there were some uncomfortable days afterwards.
I’ve been lucky that I only had one boss who I couldn’t stand or get along with. I had a job at a Sears Roebuck warehouse one summer whose awfulness was compounded with a terrible supervisor. It was from 4 am to 2 pm and consisted of pulling merchandise and constantly inventorying things like tires and mattresses. While I didn’t have email then, here’s my follow up to an imagined rant on that boss:
Dear fellow prisoners in the Bastille, I mean employees at Warehouse number 2,
Please understand that the last email I sent (and was unable to delete and replace with a new one, thanks, useless Microsoft feature) was not meant to criticize our valiant supervisor, who I am sure works hard each day around her numerous coffee breaks to plan how to make our environment run with slightly more efficiency than the exit strategy from the Titanic. I am positive that her ability to assign us tasks and not fully explain what needs to be done, is meant as a learning experience not, as I may have implied in my last email, as a lack of basic supervisory skills. Her constant yelling at the inventory crew just means she cares about us and wants us to do a good job, and does not come from a severe lack of patience with her fellow human beings.
On a related note, I would like to invite you to my ‘last day at work’ party to be held in the employee cafeteria in approximately 15 minutes, which is about as much time as it will take for me to clean out my locker and be fired by our gallant leader.
skullwoman 