Click to Send and….Oh S%@t!

Posted on Thursday, November 10, 2011

Like most of us, I Skype, email, message, and text daily. My friends and I around the world use all these methods to keep in touch, and for whatever reason, when communicating via these channels we get a bit crazy. If you looked up some of our Skype chat histories or email exchanges you’d consider us fit for a psych ward.

It seems chatting via the above methods loosens our inhibitions. And it is also extremely fun. One person sends an r-rated email out to five or six people, then an hour later you have 30 emails in your inbox with hilarious – albeit ridiculously childish – responses. It happens fast and it is all very reckless.

Ok so I finally come to the point: How often have you sent an email, Skyped, or messaged the wrong person? It happens to me a bit too often. I type in a few letters of the email address and then it is automatically filled in – but oops! – with the name of the other Sally. Or I am chatting with my best friend on Skype about women while at the same time chatting with a female colleague. One small mix up and, well, disaster.

I have been caught once or twice in an awkward situation using all the above communication methods. The response is always the same – all you can do is panic and say something like: “Sorry, I meant to send that to my friend, Nicholas, not you, Nicole, my very very important customer. You see Nick and I have been friends since high school and we joke around a lot and so we were just having fun and I really didn’t mean to offend you and if you could just delete that without reading it and if you already read it please never tell anyone I wrote that and don’t judge me because I am totally not a filthy person and don’t take your business away from me because this would be super hard to explain to my boss and…”

According to a study carried out some years back, men are more likely than women to send an email to the wrong person. And I don’t even have to try and uncover a study that reveals men are much more inclined to push the boundaries of appropriate communication. We are, by nature, inappropriate.

So where does this leave us? Can we be more careful? No we cannot. Can we be more proper? Sadly, no. Can we think up better excuses? Also no.

Like I said, all you can do is panic. And maybe do what this guy did.