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Answering emails is a normal part of life and a ceaseless task at many, many jobs. So typically it can be a relief to finish it and move on with one’s day, perhaps another email. But every now and then, one has that moment of panic when they realize who all the email was unintentionally sent to.
Someone asked “What's the most embarrassing “reply all” you have seen at work?” and people shared their best stories. So get comfortable as you scroll through, upvote the best examples and if you’ve had similar experiences, be sure to add them in the comments below, after making sure you aren’t accidentally texting it to the wrong person.
This post may include affiliate links.
#1
Once I was on a reply all from a company that buys my services that said “I don’t know why we still use him, he’s an idiot”.
I responded “I might be an idiot but at least I know how reply all works”. It went down hill from there.
Ugh, do I have to? 10 hours ago
It must've been satisfying to have such a good comeback. I know I wouldn't have thought of it until a week later.
RELATED:
#2
Someone got a scam email at work with a dodgy link and it messed up their laptop but they helpfully forwarded it to the whole company saying “not sure who this email was supposed to go to but it’s not our department” so about 30 people ended up with bricked laptops. A week later she did it again!
#3
This guy at my husband's company sent his wife a poem (that he wrote) for their anniversary and accidentally sent it to every single employee in the company (100+ people).
The poem was super sappy, but really sweet. The replies to the email were pretty funny - everybody was pretty nice about it and sent their congratulations on their anniversary. A few people relied along the lines of "Thank you so much for the poem, I love you too xoxoxo".
otiose (foxtrot delta tango) 8 hours ago
Why was he emailing his wife an anniversary poem? Did she work at the company, too,?
#4
Working in software consultancy, we were delivering a project for a particularly difficult customer called Keith or something.
One day, my boss received a positive email from him, so he quickly forwarded the email to our team saying “wow, Keith is being nice for once”. Only he didn’t forward it onto the team at all, he used Reply All instead.
He tried to do the whole Recall thing when he realised, but we all know that doesn’t really work.
Keith actually found it quite funny, and took it in his stride. His reply was something like:
“I think you might have meant to send this to someone else!
Kind regards,
Wayne Kerr”.
Upstaged75 8 hours ago
That's hilarious! 😂😂 (If you don't get it, say Wayne Kerr really fast a few times)
#5
Not mine but at my partner's place of work they sent out a request for people's Christmas Dinner order. Some guy replied-all to 7,000+ people and requested the full Christmas Dinner and Sticky Toffee Pudding please.
Later in the month when they pushed again for everyone to fill in their choices they added a picture of his face and the comment "Dan Smith has decided his Christmas Dinner order, have you?"
Ugh, do I have to? 10 hours ago
Yeah, come on! Don't be shy, tell us ALL whether you want the pudding! We're waiting...
#6
Instead of attaching a recently completed training, I attached the results of my colonoscopy test and replied all. Not my proudest moment, but at least my test went well.
#7
A lady announced she was expecting a baby.
The email went round asking for donations to the pot to buy her and the baby a gift.
Reply all:
“Jesus Christ mate, you just know that’s going to be an ugly little [kid] if it looks like its mum.”
otiose (foxtrot delta tango) 9 hours ago
That not only reflects badly on the person who reply alled, but on the people the lady works with! They felt comfortable enough to say that to the group without fear of being called out! Ugh! THEY are ugly!
#8
Company I used to work at so if someone figures it out from said company, I don't care, I don't work there anymore.
Site wide email was sent out from HR, to approximately 1500 people, with details of an upcoming LGBT event and looking for volunteers to help/join an LGBT committee to promote better practices and create and develop policies in relation to LGBT issues and/or discrimination in company.
Member of onsite security team hits reply all and types
"I don't mind all this gay stuff but I hate it when it's rammed down our throats all the time"
After the uproar and outrage and his subsequent apologies he was fired and removed from site pretty sharpish.
#9
An email from a client asking some questions directed to a new person, and a more experienced colleague replied all (including the client) saying “new employee, client is a real [jerk], she understands nothing and complains about everything, let me read your responses before you send them on to her.”
#10
Had a worker at the company in a higher position.
She did a "mail all" telling everyone what a [bad] company it was.
10 min after she mailed saying she was sorry and pls forget what she wrote. Next email was hr saying Mrs x doesn't work here anymore.
Now imagine everyone coming in at work in the morning and seeing the same 3 mails in succession minutes apart the day before after closing.
#11
A woman who worked in Facilities at a company I used to work at, sent an all staff email to say that the back door to the car park was out of action, awaiting repair. Her sister replied to her to say that she doesn’t often use the back door, but would probably make an exception for Damien (a contractor who worked in the warehouse). Obviously, instead of sending it to her sister, she replied all.
Unfortunately for her, the company operates in quite a sociable industry, so I received the email six times, only two of which came from friends still in the company. The other four were from competitors / clients who’d already had it sent on.
#12
An email went round saying how expenses would now be paid on 15th and last day of the month going forward, and not as soon as claims were processed as it had been previously.
One fairly senior lady (earning at least £70k) replied to all 14,000 employees saying it was unacceptable and how she only had £4.27 left in her account until the end of the month (this was mid month) to buy food and was relying on expenses to eat.
Queue a flurry of attempts to recall the email.
#13
Probably not even going to reach the top end of the most embarrising things and to be fair it didn't really embarrass me, but it did give me a good chuckle.
During covid I was a bit down working from home and being away from my colleagues so I thought id send my team a picture of my dog being dopey with a load of balls around him. Even captioned it 'look at this big dope'
should have been just to my team of 14 people but something went wrong and ended up being @COMPANYWIDE and for about 2 weeks I was getting replies from all over the world saying how cute my dog was.
It got a bit more intense when our Australian CEO replied saying he loved the breed and had his own, too.
I found it slightly cringy since I'm effectively the bottom of the barrel when it comes to the food chain in my company but it didn't seem to piss anyone off.
#14
This one’s pretty harsh. Jane, a nice (if, to be frank, rather annoying) lady with pretty substantial weight issues, sent the following e-mail.
“Hi guys,
Was in Tesco and noticed they have a deal on Krispy Kreme donuts. Every time you spend over X with your club card you get entered into a draw to win free donuts.” (or something like that, it was a while ago)
John, who didn’t have a very high opinion of Jane, wrote back:
“Trust her to enter this!!!”
Ouch!
#15
Two colleagues received a rather demanding email from a rather entitled client. Colleague A meant to reply or forward only to colleague B, but instead hit 'reply all' with this gem:
"Does he want us to wipe his [behind] for him too?"
Didn't lose his job, but it was touch and go.
#16
Each month my company asks everyone to individually and anonymously ‘nominate a hero’ within their team or the company etc. Someone that’s gone over and above or helped you out. One lady in particular who’s known for being arrogant and rude hit reply all, with the following written in the third person ‘I’d like to nominate {insert her own name} as the hero of the month. She’s never nominated by anyone in the company and I truly believe she deserves more recognition for her efforts’ She attempted to recall the email and failed.
#17
Happened at my workplace. A girl wrote a [spicy] email to a coworker who was her lover, but picked the ALL address instead of his, the whole building got it.
#18
I worked as a sales rep and one of my accounts sent out their invitation for their Christmas event. It went out to all of the sales reps they did business with including my new girlfriend who worked for a competitor. I sent her an email response detailing all the "activities" we would be getting into after the event...but hit reply all.
I didn't hear the end of that for the longest time, and just when everyone seemed to have forgotten, well it was approaching the month of December and the Xmas event again. Initiate round 2 sequence haha.
#19
Had an email go around about certain happenings along the line (railway) such as [attacks], aggressive people causing issues, threats and so on. Someone replied to the email, which includes all managers, area managers and even managing directors "good thing we have all these security lot going about, useless [jerks]"
Got a load of replies with people just reminding who is part of the group and other just replying wow to which she replied "oh sorry, I was trying to send this to someone else on my own email" which is basically admitting to trying to send confidential information to outside of the company which is very naughty. So yea. There was that.
#20
Not quite reply all, but embarrassing sending an email company wide when you thought it was one person story:
I started working at a company run by very religious people. We can’t swear in the office, nor can we say things like ‘oh my god’ as you will be instantly reprimanded
The guy that ran the purchase department was supposedly a drummer in a metal band, I’d had a few conversations with him but not managed to bridge the gap between friends and coworkers. I could tell we had a lot in common though.
I was asked to send an email to the purchaser about ordering more ink for a printer. I misunderstood and thought this was the guy’s private email, and not a company wide ‘purchase’ account that had multiple people auto cc’d as a result.
I signed the email off, and then wrote in small letter a bit below;
‘Hail Satan’
The entire production department were in hysterics when he called them over to see the email he’d just been sent.
#21
In the 90's I worked for Dagenham Motors. A newly hired accounts administrator sent emails that included a lot of text language.
One manager replied all with, "What is this [trash]? How much did his parents pay to get him through Uni?!
#22
We sent an email requesting an 8% reduction on about 1 million pounds worth of business we were outsourcing. Copied into the email was one of our sales guys, who happened to have the same name as one of their engineers.
They accidentally left our sales guy in the response meant for internal eyes only, basically saying " hahah we aren't going to give them any reduction even though we're already ripping them off because they're a bunch of [fools]"
They only realised their mistake when the response got forwarded to our ceo who responded back to them telling them effective immediately all work with said cpanyis to he cancelled and alternative suppliers found.
#23
Yeah 'CEO and Retail Director' is a bleep bleep bleep.
The guy was my Manager and sent reply all. I work for Multinational huge business. (Telecom). He added the reply all. Which was around 20,000 colleagues.
He went AWOL and haven't spoke to him in 8years lol.
#24
Not a reply all but instead of sending an mail to their team, someone sent an email to the entire UK distribution list (10,000 people) asking who wanted a cream cake. You can imaging the number of sarcastic replies they got from across the UK.
I may have been one of them asking for a Cream Doughnut. Yummy.
#25
2010-ish, large multinational pharma company.
Fail #1: No limits on email attachment size (managers gotta send those massive powerpoints somehow...)
Fail # 2: User comes back from holiday and attaches 500mb of holiday photos to an email. Proceeds to send email to the entire addressbook (multiple 1000's of recipients)
Fail # 3 and onward: The cascade begins - so many people responded with "Reply to all" (with attachments in tow) just to say "Please remove me from this chain" that the Exchange server went down for days. Each time we resurrected the server more mails came in pushing the same 500mb of attachments to everyone all over again.
Anarchy.
#26
Working in the games industry Ive seen and heard a lot!
Here's one...
After receiving a group email, sent by the female producer to the large QA team, one of the team replies to all "she well wants [me]". How he kept his job I don't know!
#27
HR sent out an email to the hundreds of employees in the U.K., with a few competition questions to go into a draw for some football tickets. A guy in my building answered all the questions and hit reply all.
#28
There was a mass email from HR reminding staff (600-700 in total) there was still time to sign up for some event. One person replied to say they were unavailable that day and went into detail about the... "sensitive" medical procedure they were booked in for.
#29
Owner cc'd the entire company by accident on an email where he was discussing selling the business to a competitor which would have made our entire workforce redundant.
#30
I remember from a few years back, shortly after I joined my present employer, an email being shared with our UK office about payroll issues. One unfortunate soul hit reply all to that, and in their included a number of personal details in their email, including their current salary.
#31
A lady in my work who wasn’t very tech savvy always thought that generic office wide emails were personally addressed for her. When they emailed out plans for the office Christmas do to everyone she replied “that’s nice” to all.
#32
My co-manager at the coffee shop got into an altercation with a barista via email. The barista, feeling insulted, forwarded their conversation to the entire barista staff (intentionally). I sent him a private email lambasting his behavior, and said, "note how I'm sending this privately, out of respect". Accidentally clicked "reply all" and sent that email to the entire staff. Easily the most hypocritical thing I've ever done.
#33
I work for an online retailer that holds customer-centrism to the highest esteem. Everything revolves around the customer, and we do almost anything we can to meet their needs. Cue a guy on my team sending out a Cracked article on "10 Ways Customers are Wrong." He intended to send it to our team, but he sent it to every customer service site in the world. When I saw the email notification pop up I looked over at him and watched his face go red. He only got written up, but it was enough to get him sent home for the day.
#34
NHS Mail a few years ago. Someone in London was testing a distribution list or something and accidentally copied it to all ~850k users. That started a barrage of "What is this?", "I don't think this is for me!", and the best one "Please stop replying to all as you're copying in people unnecessarily."
It caused absolute pandemonium and completely knacked the NHS internal email system for the entire day, and most of the next day too. Replies were still dropping in hours later. I was working on a service desk at the time so had a deluge of tickets from users asking why NHS Mail wasn't working and helpfully letting us know that they were getting messages from people they didn't know.
It made it onto BBC News.
#35
The worst "reply all" I've seen was something from HR about a #metoo awareness session, and one of the sales guys replied, some generic "sounds great!" response - we were a business unit of about fifty people, so not that egregious, if unnecessary.
The next reply all, though, was from his mate who said "Jesus christ fella, you're not the type of guy to benefit from #metoo!"
The original guy replied "it's not like they need to know that ;)"
Neither realised they were doing this over reply all until someone else replied all telling them, cue reply all apologies and "it was just an in-joke".
They got spoken to by HR but nothing else as far as I'm aware. While I don't have any questionable sexist views to broadcast in the first place, I often think back on it as a reminder to check if I've hit reply all or just reply.
#36
When I worked in the home office, a Muslim woman sent an email to her Muslim colleague, chastising her for not wearing a headscarf and hitting her with that whole 'your body is like a pearl' Mohammed Ali quote.
She also managed to CC in everyone in the ODPM (now the, ugh, 'Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities').
It caused quite a stir, obviously, and was quite popular with racists.
#37
Not quite the same, but a company wide email went around advertising a position for store manager in a store somewhere. A few hours later the manager of that store replied all asking why their job was being advertised, and said they had had a conversation in which they said they were thinking of looking for a new job but hadn't resigned. Awkward.
#39
One of our IT admins sent an email asking everyone to update their work phones and tablets. Went to around 400+ people.
Que around 60 replay all emails saying "mine is updated" or "how do we update"
My manager replied all to an email thread accusing me of not finishing a task on time, I had finished it, but he was checking his emails from newest to oldest and hadn't seen my email with the task completed. I didn't hold my tongue on that one and put him right.
#40
A colleague once sent an email to the entire organisation saying "Hi daddy" and a load of gobbledegook. We are a multinational company with 1000s of employees across the whole world.
Presumably they'd left their laptop unlocked and their toddler decided to have some fun.
#41
With covid restrictions In Hospitals changing week to week over the last year or so, an email went out regarding staff parking in the patient car park. I don’t know which was better the reply all of “in relation to your earlier email, kindly foxtrot Oscar” or the reply all response from one of our doctors from Romania who didn’t understand and asked what foxtrot Oscar meant, or the reply all response from one of the nurses advising that the original poster was telling the management team to [buzz] off.
It was great!
#42
My friend turned down a colleague’s request for a task as he had something urgent to do for the COO. He slagged off said COO in the email (not even that badly, just saying it was a ‘waste of time’), accidentally cc’ing ‘UKOffice’.
I immediately told him what he’d done and he went white and legged it to find the IT guy (presumably to try and get him to turn back time). The COO was an arrogant jerk who had him fired over it.
My friend later sued for unfair dismissal, and won some tasty sum of money.
#43
Used to work in a secondary school and before they implemented any rules that would stop people from sending to all@domain.co.uk there was one fairly savvy person who realised he could do it, and decided to have a laugh with it.
Decided to send an email at 3am of himself in a clown mask, to the all@ group. That caused a stir.
#44
A few years ago, one of the administrators at work (a rather reserved, shy man) accidentally sent an email around to the entire university academic staff containing a link with Rebecca Black’s ‘Friday’ with ‘happy Friday 😀’ just underneath. It was clearly just meant to go to one person, and would have kind of been okay in a silly way if he didn’t follow it up with such a formal apology.
#45
Our receptionist sent a company wide “who knicked my sausage roll from the fridge” email. EVERYBODY replied all with “it was me”. It was hilarious carnage, “it was me” pinging around the office for hours :) “it was me” inception. (Ps, it wasn’t me)
#46
A coworker replied to a email about corona restrictions and guide lines with an emoji. Thumbs up, is what he send to everyone in the company.
#47
!!! At my college, a Christmas message went round. I don’t think that it’s an exaggeration to say that it’s 10,000 staff.
The reply from an admin of the principle sent back a veiled racist message about how it was exciting that Christmas has been mentioned publicly, and how they thought it was banned…
Heads rolled! (They didn’t, but they were shunted into equality and diversity training and given a warning)
#48
Mine. It was a spam [privates] enlargement email that made it through the filters. I replied saying "no thanks I'm good"... Apparently my boss running over laughing was the first indication that I had replied all to about 1000 employees in a distribution list.
#49
Not sure if embarrassing, but my favourite was when our second in command retired and the email anniucing his retirement party and how to donate money to a group gift, someone wrote back "hell no, do you know how much more that man makes than I do?!"
#50
In my first job as a graduate engineer I had a job to do outside that created a lot of plastic swarf. Not a big deal, would get swept up at the end.
Went in to get a cup of tea and the office busybody went out and photographed it all and complained to a very broad CC of senior management and various heads of department. This was around 2006 and the line he used, in complete seriousness, was “we don’t want another Buncefield”.
Director of Technology replied to all… 100% not accidentally: “DO NOT WASTE MY TIME WITH THIS”
#51
Smallish law firm, circa 2009.
Firm-wide e-mail saying "Can the driver of the silver Peugeot, registration DY52XCJ, please move their car as it's blocking in [HR director]."
(Plate details are made up).
Reply all from a paralegal: "Who the [hell] cares?"
HR director cared very much. The paralegal was gone within the hour.
#52
Dell used to like hassling us to sell their equipment for them. Once our "account manager" put all of the different companies they were hassling into the CC field instead of the BCC field so everyone could see each other's email addresses.
They then noticed their mistake and replied to everyone apologising. Which triggered a load of the contacts at different companies around the UK to reply all and then start getting into fights with each other over not hitting reply all.
I think I had to feel embarrassed on behalf of a lot of people who apparently thought throwing a hissy fit in writing to a load of companies they don't know was in any way professional.
#53
Mine was the following, when the two company bosses (one short, one tall) were coming to visit the client site I was working at:
"Stayed out drinking in the club until 3 last night, then busted a gut to get to (client) before Little and Large arrived this morning. Exactly what I needed with a massive hangover! Turns out I needn't have bothered because they went to (other client) on the way."
In my hungover state I'd replied to all on the weekly client planning email, rather than the one between me and my mates. For once I was glad that the bosses never seemed to read my emails, because it was never mentioned.
#54
Work football group chain. One guy who isn't best is playing. Then someone replies all "It's OK, you're not
He still hasn't lived that one down and it was years ago.
#55
A few years ago I was working for a small (<50 people) recruitment company, and it was common for us to send emails to the whole company asking for likes & shares on linkedin job postings to get more notice. I don’t remember the exact quote, but one day a relatively new hire who was a friend of the director accidentally emailed everyone an email addressed to that director, saying ‘got the beak boys, beers lads beers lads beers lads’.
No one got anything done for the rest of the day.
What do you think ?
James016 6 hours ago
A few years ago our UK MD announced a new client and it was a significant win. One of my colleagues did a reply all saying "No" We still rib him about it. A week or so ago, the IT director put an email out about email etiquette. One point being do not use reply all if you feel the need to reply to a company wide email. Though most reply-alls are along the lines of "OK" and "Thanks for letting us know"
James016 6 hours ago
A few years ago our UK MD announced a new client and it was a significant win. One of my colleagues did a reply all saying "No" We still rib him about it. A week or so ago, the IT director put an email out about email etiquette. One point being do not use reply all if you feel the need to reply to a company wide email. Though most reply-alls are along the lines of "OK" and "Thanks for letting us know"
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