sometimes my blog writes itself
Written by washwords on May 23, 2008 – 3:16 pmwork sends emails that make me laugh out loud sometimes all the time. What follows is today’s but for those who don’t like to read, here’s the bottom line: 1) the email we sent you ISN’T SPAM. DON’T DELETE IT FOR THE LOVE OF GOD. and 2) (ha ha ha ha, that this is point 2,) : the infomation in said EMAIL THAT YOU ARE NOT TO DELETE is incorrect. please disregard it until further notice.
Here it is (and nope, I’m not even sayin what’s wrong with the grammar/spelling/syntax/plain English here (but hint: subject/verb agreement) :
In this week’s <newsletter>, we announced that our travel agency, z, would be sending you a pin number to access your Traveler’s Profile. Unfortunately, their parent company sent the email under their name, x, rather than under y, z, or p. This resulted in employees thinking they had received spam. These emails are not spam, they are bona fide emails from y that contain your pin number and password. Please do not destroy them.
On a separate note [me: HA HA HA], we have discovered that the passwords and pin numbers are not working and are we are working to resolve the issue. Please do not try to use them until p can fix the problem. In next week’s <newsletter>. we will announce when you will be able to access your profile using the pin number and password that were emailed to you. Please keep a copy of these emails for future reference.
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Tags: bad emails, bad writing, confusing, confusion, delete, email, English, humor, language, making simple complicated, misnomers, misplaced modifiers, office, order, overheard, passwords, plain English, poor command of English language, poor syntax, spam, spelling, spelling error, technology, unclear antecedents, work, writing
Posted in words | 19 Comments »
May 23rd, 2008 at 3:36 pm
So many letters… y????
http://3critical.wordpress.com
May 23rd, 2008 at 4:29 pm
that was part of the funny. The email from my office listed about 4 or 5 or 12 names for the one travel agent (who sent the infamous NOT SPAM password email. To me this made my workplace’s outrage that an email was sent by yet ANOTHER name ( (said travel company’s parent company) all the more ridiculous. Maybe ya had to be there?
May 23rd, 2008 at 4:58 pm
I just love this. Really. A few years ago,
the company I worked for, X, was bought out
by Y. A couple of weeks later all of the
UK-based employees of Y who were formerly
employed by X received mail that (basically)
said, “You’re fired.” The next day, a
messenger went to each of them and hand-
delivered a letter that (basically) said,
“Oops. Our bad. Only 70% of you were
supposed to have gotten that. Stay
tuned.” I suppose it was funniest to
those of us who weren’t affected.
May 23rd, 2008 at 5:01 pm
O M G. Gilahi, I’m literally LOL. That trumps mine by a mile!
May 23rd, 2008 at 9:28 pm
Oh my. These are some of the things I actually miss about the working world…such entertainment!
May 23rd, 2008 at 9:33 pm
I love corporate email red tape. <3
May 23rd, 2008 at 10:11 pm
hee hee. i’ll keep collecting them then. sadly, they aren’t hard to find if they usually contain a few more errors. Liz and “what Liz said” … ummm, spooky! I’m wondering if WLS follows L around so she can have the perfect name when she agrees with a Liz post.
May 24th, 2008 at 12:07 am
Yes, exactly! I’m her PR.
May 24th, 2008 at 1:53 pm
Some people are inclined to forgive typos and grammatical errors in email. I am not one of those people. It’s writing, folks, and it really ought to be, like, CORRECT before you send it to a bunch of people. Especially employees.
You are lucky to have such a content-rich place of employment!
May 24th, 2008 at 1:55 pm
Oh, and gilahi? Sadly, emails like that give us HR folks a bad rap. Know that when I send a “you’re fired” email, I always triple-check the distribution lists BEFORE I press “send”. (heh)
January 24th, 2009 at 11:43 am
Great site.
March 2nd, 2009 at 6:47 am
Gut!
March 28th, 2009 at 7:51 pm
Hello!
Very Interesting post! Thank you for such interesting resource!
PS: Sorry for my bad english, I’v just started to learn this language
See you!
Your, Raiul Baztepo
WW says: Thanks Raiul. Hope you’ll return and your English sounds fine to me.
September 10th, 2009 at 9:55 am
Hi! I was surfing and found your blog post… nice! I love your blog.
Cheers! Sandra. R.
February 2nd, 2010 at 11:51 am
Generally I do not post on blogs, but I would like to say that this post really forced me to do so, Excellent post!
-Robert Shumake
February 6th, 2010 at 4:41 am
Nice work! I can’t get Welcome to the Jungle out of my head! ”Welcome to The Jungle, We’ve Got Fun And Games”
February 6th, 2010 at 5:43 pm
I truly believe that we have reached the point where technology has become one with our society, and I am fairly certain that we have passed the point of no return in our relationship with technology.
I don’t mean this in a bad way, of course! Ethical concerns aside… I just hope that as the price of memory decreases, the possibility of downloading our brains onto a digital medium becomes a true reality. It’s one of the things I really wish I could see in my lifetime.
(Posted on Nintendo DS running R4 SDHC DS NetPost)
February 9th, 2010 at 1:40 am
Nice work! Why cant we just keep it simple and talk about the superbowl?
February 15th, 2010 at 2:47 pm
interesting article. I would love to follow you on twitter.