By Julian Goldsmith, 3 July 2001 15:04
NEWS Email has now almost replaced face-to face conversation in the office entirely, because it means you don't have to shift out of your chair. But it opens up a whole new range of social pitfalls that can have the unwary committing all sorts of horrendous faux pas. A survey carried out by Fox's Biscuits found that six out of ten email users have at one time or another sent out highly embarrassing or incriminating messages by accident. It found that most users regularly mail colleagues who sit less than ten feet away. However, the highlights of the survey were the email gaffes to which people admitted. For example, the MD of a software company who sent the whole company's salary details to all staff and then set off the fire alarm in order to cover his tracks. It took him three hours to manually delete the email from everyone's desktops while the staff enjoyed an afternoon in the pub. The CEO of a publishing company letting all the invitees attending a technology conference know that they were "dull as dishwater, propeller headed techie nerds". The PR consultant who wrote a rather intimate email to her boyfriend only to send it to a friend with the same name on the other side of the world. The party organiser whose partner discovered she was having an affair when he was accidentally copied on an email to her lover. Or, the instance where somebody received an email from a customer and hit 'reply' when they meant to forward the message to colleagues, including the comment "what the feck does this crazy bitch want". If you know of any embarrassing email episodes, send them to editorial@silicon.com and we will feature them in this week's Round-up. Names will of course be withheld to protect the innocent. Also, for the chance to win six bottles of champagne, visit silicon.com's Digital Etiquette survey: http://www.silicon.com/goto-digitalsurvey-ns
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