As Google invents an 'unsend' button... What's the most embarrassing email YOU wish you'd never sent

[Surya Gayatri]

Last week Google announced welcome news for anyone who has ever experienced the horror of sending an email to the wrong person — a new ‘unsend’ function that can cancel the message.

* Six writers reveal the excruciating emails they regret sending to contacts

* Most were accidentally sent to the wrong person - including one boss

* Cringeworthy tales include a declaration of love to professional contacts




SAM TAYLOR

‘Do you like it?’ she wanted to know, beaming and clearly not wanting to hear the truth. Who wants the truth when you’ve just spent £2,000 on a dress you can’t return?

So, inevitably, I mumbled something about it being ‘lovely’ and left.

Afterwards I sent a panic email to our mutual friend Stella saying we needed to make a last minute intervention: ‘What is she thinking?’ I wrote. ‘She looks like a purple meringue. Her bum looks huge. He doesn’t want her back anyway but especially not in that outfit. She just looks crazeeee. We have to do something.’
...


BRIAN VINER

Even now, four years later, I wince with embarrassment when I think of the email. I was organising a three-day golf trip for a bunch of mates from university and needed one more person to make up numbers, so invited an old school friend, Bill.
...

Only I didn’t just say that. For some witless reason I decided to be melodramatic and added that it had been a ‘ghastly mistake’, for which I was ‘truly sorry’, and that I would ‘take one for the team’ by rooming with Bill myself.

Then, just to amuse myself further, I added that Bill had a few unpleasant personal habits, which I couldn’t divulge. This was untrue, but it tickled me.
...

TOBY YOUNG

The email I wish I’d never sent was not just to my neighbour, who I’d got into a minor dispute with, but my entire street.
...

Instead, I replied to her email, copying in all the same people, saying that I had tried to be polite and underlining the importance of keeping rubbish off the street as it attracts ‘vermin, which can pose a threat to human health’.

I now realise my response was pompous and patronising, and if I had the opportunity to take it back I would. My neighbour and I have not spoken since.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3143969/As-Google-invents-unsend-button-s-embarrassing-email-wish-d-never-sent.html

____________________

Will we finally be able to walk it back or 'take it back, literally?

Any funny, embarrassing anecdotes out there, ones that make you blush even today?

[snooper2]

1. Okay Idea Google, doesn't work like most people would think though LOL

Google is just caching the email before they send it out- You can set your time like 10 minutes to decide if you Really want to send it, after that it is gone and sent.



Not like Google can log on to ever fucking POP3 or IMAP server in the World and delete email

[Surya Gayatri]

5. So, you can set the "send time" as part of your parameters?

The way they're hyping it, you'd think they can reach into every server, in every corner of cyberspace, and grab it back! LOL!

[hollysmom]

2. it is not an unsend button,

it is an I am thinking it over button. It just delays the send for a few seconds.

[Surya Gayatri]

4. Well, Google is making such a big deal of it, you'd think it was

the greatest thing since sliced bread! LOL!

[Erich Bloodaxe BSN]

3. I don't think I've ever sent one that I was able to decide I shouldn't have sent within 30 seconds.

The only one I really wish I'd never sent, I didn't know I shouldn't have til weeks later, when I was far less depressed over losing my dog, and then finally got a reply that that email I sent while in total anguish had been the 'last straw' and cost me a friendship of almost three decades, because I was just 'too depressing'.

[Surya Gayatri]

7. Me too. I've had parts of e-mails come back to haunt me, but only some time later.

With really important ones, I tend to proofread obsessively before hitting "Send".

[Quackers]

6. Forget emails, make one for text messages!

How many times has someone sent a text to the wrong person? Several years ago, when I was still in the Army, I was laying in my bunk one night sexting with my wife. After typing up a great text of the things I was going to do to her, I press the send button and then realize I just sent it to my Platoon Sergeant. I think I literally stopped breathing for 30 seconds. My body just froze and all my mind could come up with was !!!FUCK, FUCK, FUCK, FUCK, FUCK!!!

[alarimer]

8. This X1000

I have done something similar. Only I was saying something not very nice about a work colleague and sent it, to that colleague, when I meant to send it to a friend.

[ChisolmTrailDem]

9. Sooooo...

You left out the most important part of the story!!! Give it up!

[Quackers]

10. After the initial panic subsided

I played it off as I was some random stranger, then pulled the SIM card. The next day when confronted by my sergeant, I told him no, that's not my number, you must've entered it wrong! I had the number changed and said, "see, this is MY number!"

[ChisolmTrailDem]

11. Roffle!

[Brickbat]

12. This has been a part of Google Labs for quite some time, and I've taken great advantage of it.

I tend to not type super embarrassing emails anyway, but I have definitely used it to pull back an email where I don't see the typo until after I hit "send," or forget to attach something. I have a 10-second delay set.

[Surya Gayatri]

13. How did I only hear about it today? I won't need it much...but still...

[Brickbat]

14. Google Labs is where they try new features out and test them on a wider audience.

I haven't read the announcement, but I assume it's saying that the feature is now a standard thing, not something you opt into through Labs.

[Surya Gayatri]

15. I see, that makes the timeline clearer.

Yes, it's supposedly generally available now.

[Sen. Walter Sobchak]

16. I sent an email to another department

There was this guy named Jerry, he was weird and I knew he made one of the women in my department uncomfortable.

I sent an email to someone in another department saying "Please send Greg next time, Jerry makes Jennifer uncomfortable."

Then Jerry saw that email on the computer of the person I sent it to and he threatened to sue both me and the woman I said he made uncomfortable. HR came after me for not advising the woman to make a proper harassment complaint, but he wasn't really harassing her, he was just fucking weird.

Eventually he threatened me in-front of a dozen people and was immediately fired.

I felt really stupid about it because I saw the person I sent the email to practically every day, our parking spots were side by side. There would have been any number of opportunities to say it privately.