Even at Net-savvy NetGuide, staff have had them – email horror stories. Most of us have at some time experienced that sinking feeling after pressing “send” on an email and realising it was not ready to send.

We’ve gathered some of the worst email stories we’ve been told, so that you can avoid the harsh lessons others have had. A few names and details have had to be changed to avoid obvious embarrassment!

LESSON ONE: How to lose your partner
Lisa was feeling happy at work one sunny afternoon, so sent her loved one named Clint an email to say how much she was missing him but was counting down the time at work until she saw him again. Because she sent it from work, there was nothing too intimate or detailed in the email, but there was one little problem: Because the email address was so familiar to her, she addressed it to the wrong work address – to her husband, who of course was unaware of a man named Clint in her life.

Tip: make sure you check the address before you send the email. Better still, be faithful to your partner and it will never be an issue.

LESSON TWO: How to divide your relatives
Andy has two aunties – one he likes, the other he strongly despises because he claims she is always interfering in his life and giving him bad advice. The favoured one is called Margaret, the less popular one Mary. He and his wife invited Margaret to dinner along with a couple of other relatives and in his email he asked Margaret under no circumstances to mention it to Mary because he and his wife were fed up with her interfering and didn’t want to socialize with her other than was necessary. He sent off the email –and was staggered to get an email back from Mary not Margaret and had assumed that Margaret had disobeyed the instructions and had forwarded

Tip: Using a facility for an email program to recognise email addresses you begin to type can prevent mistakes you make when manually typing in email addresses, but can also lead to the wrong email address being “completed”. Always check before sending the email.

LESSON THREE: How to lose business
Don had a rush to the head when he sent an angry message to a supplier about how bad their service was. He copied (cc) his assistant sales manager into the email. When the supplier sent a reply trying to excuse the problem, Don replied and over the next little while, the emails went backwards and forth and grew into one long email as neither person took the time to delete the previous remarks that were still in the body of the email. After several exchanges, Don had a further rush of blood to the head and decided to instruct his assistant sales manager to pull the plug on the supplier to teach then a *** lesson. He clicked on what he thought was the assistant sales person’s email address highlighted half way down the long email and in the blank email form that appeared in the middle of his screen (with the email address automatically typed in), he typed off an email that detailed in no uncertain terms what he thought of the supplier and the supplier’s representative whom he had been emailing. The email address he clicked on and formed the email address was the supplier’s not the assistant sales manager’s email address. The supplier later threatened legal action over some of the statements Don had made in the email that had been incorrectly sent to him.

Tip: Before you ever send any highly contentious email, take a deep breath, go for a walk, do whatever you need to do to calm down. These days emails can become part of legal action, yet unlike difficult business documents of old, emails are not things you agonise over, but usually respond the way you would answer back in a verbal conversation. Also, as this example shows, you need to check what email address you click on to create a new message!

LESSON FOUR
When the HR department decided on a new policy, an email was sent to individual managers with the request that it be passed on to each department’s staff. When this collective email reached employee Jenny, she read it and sighed that it confirmed her belief that the company she worked for was a “joke”. She was on friendly terms with her immediate superior –the one who had forwarded her and her department’s staff the email. So she pressed “reply” and told her immediate boss in rather coarse language what she thought of the new move, assuming the superior would also be cynical about the move. She didn’t realise that she had pressed a “reply to all” option and, because of the path by which the email had reached her via her immediate superior, everyone in the company actually received her outburst. By the time the working day had ended, it had been suggested to her that she might want to go and work somewhere else, and her immediate superior was also questioned about her attitude to the company as it was obvious from Jenny’s email that she also had some “issues”.

Tip: For emails that various people receive, be careful that in replying you reply to a specific email and that your reply is not copied into everyone – unless that is what you wish to happen. Remember in the workplace, the potential for your emails falling into the wrong hands is enormous and the IT department may even monitor your emails. Employment court rulings around the world have been on the side of the employer in such cases, saying that if the company owns the computer you use at work, and/ or the work is done in work time on the company premises, the company has the right to see your emails or where you are Web surfing.

LESSON FIVE
Tom couldn’t take his eyes off the dress one of his fellow staff was wearing and couldn’t help but pass a one-line remark via email to his best mate at work. The best mate thought the wording of Tom’s observation was hilarious and forwarded it to several others. You can probably guess what happened. Within half an hour Tom was flooded with emails – either attempting to add further humour to his original comments or accusing him of being sexist and offensive. He wasn’t fired but he was warned and found his working relationship with some of the women changed forever.

Tip: Always treat an email you send as an open postcard. Email programs make it easy for you to forward on emails – almost encourage it by having the forward option open to you. Jokes pass so quickly around the Net using email that a joke you create one morning can be laughed at by people on the other side of the world by the afternoon. Never put anything in an email that could cause difficulties if people you may or may not know see it.

Email urban legends

• I can delete my emails:
  No, they can usually be recovered.

• Only the intended recipient sees the email:
  No, email is often forwarded to many others.

• I can hide my email address:
  You can try, but authorities have got far more clever in tracing emails and are getting the co-operation of ISPs.

• Authorities will never intercept my email:
  See above. Since the September 11 terrorist action, governments have re-written privacy laws so they can intercept emails as well as telephone calls.

• Private emails sent from work are private:
  More firms are monitoring emails, especially watching out for key words such as competitors’ names. It's even possible mail sent from Web-based email services like Hotmail could be seen.

• Emails are mainly harmless:
  Because emails are words written down, they can be easily misinterpreted, especially if they are meant to be sarcastic

• There are so many emails being sent, I'm safe:
  Again, remember the forward facility.

• Emails are not legal documents: They are appearing in more and more court cases. Because they can be easily altered in the computer, a copy of the email usually has to be signed under oath as being an unaltered original before being accepted by a court.