Sequel to Why You Should Proofread Emails.
Oh my god, will I never figure out this email thing?
The first true story I ever put up on this blog was Why You Should Proofread Emails and while I haven’t exactly repeated the mistakes of the past, I managed to mess up pretty big anyhow.
Let’s set the scene, shall we?
It’s one in the afternoon and I’ve just woken up. I don’t really want to get out of bed, but thankfully I don’t have to in order to reach my laptop, so I’m there covered in blankets with my laptop checking my email for anything my lecturers may have sent out since yesterday. There’s the usual spam of people who want me to take surveys and events going on around the university. One of them looks kind of interesting, actually. A literary agent talk next week, free to students. Excellent. I’m both a broke student and free next week.
The time and place info is underlined. This happens whenever I get invites or schedule meetings. I’m kind of curious about what happens if I click on it, but I kind of assume it’s the same as Google’s gmail and it just adds the event to my calendar. I figure, yeah, I’ll go to this one. So I click on it. Sure enough, a date and time and little calendar picture pop up. I don’t really read through everything, it looks straightforward enough. I press the blue button that probably said “enter” or “save” or “finish” or something to that effect. Then I move on to something else.
Not long after, I find about five emails saying “the message could not be sent to these addresses” and one “out of office” automatic reply. Where did these come from? I never emailed anybody.
I did some checking and while I did, I started getting more emails. RSVP emails, because apparently the little calendar thing did NOT save an event in my personal calendar, it SENT INVITATIONS TO EVERY ADDRESS IN THE ORIGINAL EMAIL.
Great.
The organizer of the event emailed me thanking me for the publicity and asking why I did it, much to my mortification. Today, days later, I’m still getting RSVPs to this thing that I’m not sure I should go to anymore, in case anyone recognizes me as the one who accidentally sent a mass email.
The moral of the story is that technology is evil and do not randomly click on things out of curiosity even if you think you know what will happen because you don’t.
Precarious Writer 