Friday, June 22, 2007

The perils of Gmail.

You know how Gmail anticipates the email address when you start to type it? Like, you'll type in "b" for "babysitter" and it'll pull up "big-name author you emailed last year?"

You see where this is going?

Yes, I did it. I invited a famous author to babysit for Bean next week.

Fortunately, she has a sense of humor and responded kindly to let me know that I'd probably emailed the wrong person. (She was also kind enough to let me know that she wasn't available, which not all babysitters do.)

I'd love to know the most embarrassing thing you've ever done on email...

4 comments:

Veronica said...

Heh. That's funny. Embarassing, but funny.

Anonymous said...

It wasn't email, but I accidentally sent a sympathy card to my aunt for her birthday, and a birthday card to my mom's friend who just lost her husband. They both understood.

Anna said...

I have received a number of misdirected Gmails. One was a string of bizarre, anal-retentive emails from a father to his YOUNG children (like all of these kids were under 10) with requests to clean their rooms, clean the basement, remember to keep ice cream off the seats of his car, phone etiquette while he was at work, etc. He sent me emails for months, even after I told him I wasn't one of his kids.

I also received a number of emails regaring a separate person with my name who was suing her landlord. I then got an email from the woman's lawyer, commanding me to immediately delete all the emails I'd just received and risk a suit filed against me if I shared them with anyone.

Anonymous said...

That's really embarassing! To avoid that next time thought, you should definitely visit this new email provider. It's called BigString (http://www.bigstring.com), the new free webmail program. It offers revolutionary features. When you send mail from your BigString free email account, you are protected. BigString is like an automatic shredder for your email. You can self-destruct or change an email that's already been sent or read. Don't leave your messages sitting in peoples' inbox forever. And now you can make sure that emailing the wrong person doesn't have to be your most embarassing moment!!