Recall

At work today, I was helping out a new girl and explaining how our department goes about contacting certain other departments outside the business.

She was busy at the time, so she asked me to send her an email explaining what she should do. So I went back to my desk and wrote her a brief email, explaining that she should call these two people but avoid calling these other people because they weren't very helpful. I searched for the phone numbers of the "unhelpful" people and put them in the email anyway, because she still might need to contact them.

Then i clicked "Send". And at that same moment I pressed the button, I saw - to my infinite horror - that I had left the email addresses of the "unhelpful" people as recipients of that very email!

Too late! The email had been sent.

I immediately sent an apologetic email to the people involved, but it was an utterly humiliating, embarrassing moment. How will I ever be able to live this down!! They will of course be thinking that I am a stupid rude idiot, and they would be right.

There is nothing I can do. Once an email is sent, it's gone. I wish I could have been able to recall it, but it wasn't possible. Some things in life cannot be glossed over, and certainly they can't be reversed. Unless you are an intimate friend of H G Wells, Time only moves in one direction.

Maybe that's something I can suggest to Bill Gates - make an email time machine, so that we can retrieve those accidental email bombs!