Today I did something that I haven’t done in a very long time. I sent an email to the wrong person. Though it wasn’t a big deal it still reached someone it wasn’t supposed to reach.
It took me a while to realise it and when I did, I think my heart might have stopped for a split second. During the morning I was having conversations with two different companies around work commitments for the next couple of weeks. Both contact persons are called very similar names, like let’s say Mike and Michael. I’d emailed with Mike to begin with and meant to send Michael and email asking about news around a potential project that might be coming up. I told Michael (or so I thought) that I needed to know before 1.30pm as I had to get back to the other company. Around 1.20pm Michael called me and naturally I thought it was in response to my email. The conversation all made sense so I didn’t think anything more of it. Until I got an response from who I thought was Michael (it was a response to my email so the subject was a bit misleading).
By this time we’d exchanged around three emails on the subject and it wasn’t until I got the last email that I realised that instead of sending the initial email to Michael I’d sent it to Mike. There was nothing else to do but to pick up the phone, call Mike, explain the situation and apologies. Though the email conversation didn’t contain any sensitive information but was just about my availability and arranging what days I’d work where, it still wasn’t great. But we all make mistakes and when we do there is no point trying to cover up the tracks and come up with some kind of explanation. What happened happened and honesty is most often the best way forward combined. Of course far worse things than my confused email chain can happen, and has happened to big corporations. But even then there are ways to turn those things around in your favour rather than trying to cover up your tracks. I wrote a little bit about that back in March 2011 in a post called Crap that wasn’t meant to happen.
Tomorrow – Day 245 | A small tilt and a comment
Image source: www.flickr.com/photos/tybo/3018047759
