If you're going to make fun of some idiotic email message you got, make sure to hit FWD. Turns out, if you hit "reply" -- like I did a few minutes ago -- it's not as funny.

ScottHar

HAH!!!!

oopsy ahahahhah

LOL!

One of the basic elements of humor is 'surprise'.

ScottHar-

you best go have some coffee...I've found it helps me avoid such events ahahahhaah

^

Depending to whom the message was sent back to, burbon might be a better choice.

Ohhh Nooooo!!!!! 🙂

EMR....and I thought we were friends...:-(

NINE reasons to hit fwd vs reply...

Outlook (if you use that) has a recall feature if you're fast enough.

A number of years ago when I was first out of business school I was contacted about a job in DC working for the British Consulate.

So I "forwarded" the email from the HR staffer to my advisor, saying "The pay isn't very good, but it looks like a really interesting job".

Needless to say I was not invited to interview.

#10 - workes great on internal networks but once the horse leaves the barn you are screwed

One of our (former) customers was actively involved in raising money for a charity for the disease that afflicted on of his kids. He sent an email to all his vendors including us looking for danations, things to raffle off, etc. The sales admin who received the email meant to "forward" it to the sales manager with this note: Hey this idiot just sent us a complete list of everyone we compete against in this account.

Yup, he hit reply all instead of forward. Hence the (former) customer.

how is the (former) sales manager doing?

When we cut-over from Eudora (loved that email client, it was bullet proof) to MS Outlook, a lot of folks didn't realize that it would auto-complete email addys, and a lot of interesting stuff got sent to the wrong groups/people...it was quite humorous at times.

Those steak knives may be out of reach now, no matter what you sell.

Just yesterday a friend of mine wrote his ex-wife an email where they were arguing back and forth about a kid issue.

The ex-wife topped his email with some sharp criticism of him, meaning to fwd it to her current husband. She hit reply instead and sent it back to my friend, her ex-husband.

Whoops there. Then she was dumb enough to send another email right on top of that telling him to disregard her previous email as it was meant for her current husband.

Don't write anything you wouldn't want everyone to read.

Off topic, but on internal networks it can be useful to tick return receipt, and hit reply to all. Useful to find out if a hostile colleague blind-copied others.