So this happened two days ago, and I’ve barely slept since.
I’ve been working at my current company for almost five years, and I recently got an offer from another place with better pay and remote work. It wasn’t an easy decision, but I decided to take it. I wrote up a polite, professional resignation letter, attached it to an email, and meant to send it to my direct manager and HR.
Except I didn’t.
Instead of typing in my manager’s name, I clicked “All Staff” which, for some reason, is not only still an active mailing list, but also includes everyone in the company worldwide, including executives, people I’ve never met, interns, and the literal founder.
So I sent it. Subject line: “My Resignation”
Body:
“Hi [Manager], attached is my formal resignation letter. Thank you for the opportunity, and I wish you and the team all the best moving forward.”
Thirty seconds later, I start getting pings.
Not from my manager.
From… everyone.
Coworkers I haven’t spoken to in years messaging me “???”
One person just replied with “congrats???”
Someone from IT in Singapore asked, “Is this a phishing test?”
A guy from Finance I’ve never met replied-all with “Best of luck!” which then triggered 15 more reply-alls.
At one point someone replied-all with just “UNSUBSCRIBE” in all caps.
Then my manager messaged me:
“Hey, did you mean to send that to literally everyone?”
I wanted to crawl inside my laptop and die. The CEO didn’t respond, but I know he saw it because someone on his team forwarded it to him thinking it was a comms issue.
HR called me that afternoon. They weren’t mad, just very confused. Then they told me this now counts as my “official notice,” and I had basically started my resignation timer a week earlier than I’d intended.
So now I’m scrambling to wrap things up sooner, coworkers I haven’t spoken to in months are asking where I’m going, and I’ve accidentally created the impression that I rage-quit publicly, even though my actual letter was the most vanilla, polite exit email ever written.
TL,DR: Meant to send my resignation letter to my manager, sent it to the entire global company instead, caused a reply-all chain, HR confusion, and now I’m leaving a week early while half the company thinks I rage quit.
Comments
Damn. My cheeks are burning! But no worries, you’re not going to meet them ever after! In 2 months, this will be a funny story for your friends! 🙂
Just do a reply all and say something like, “Sorry for sending it to the entire company – obviously I did not intentionally do that. But I appreciate all the well wishes and will miss this place and the many friends and colleagues I have made here.”
This made me cackle. Thanks!
Don’t worry, you’re not gonna be there for much longer 😀
“OOPS… IT really shouldn’t let us do a send all email like that huh.”
This is just another reason why I give my resignation in person or via phone call. It allows me to have a conversation with my supervisor and potentially negotiate terms. If they accept or we can’t reach a conclusion, then I hit send on the electronic version of the resignation letter.
Yea no you don’t need them anymore….. Don’t work yourself to the ground on your way out ‼️
Weird that a worldwide company with what I assume is thousands of employees would have an ‘all staff’ distribution list that doesn’t have restricted delivery management on it. There should be a separate TIFU from whoever is in charge of their IT.
It’s IT’s fault that you even have the permission to email the all staff email group.
That should be locked down to a very small list of people.
God that is embarrassing lol. But also these mfers who reply back with reply all annoy me so much. Jesus, if you want to say something, just reply back to the sender only and relevant people cc’d.
Could this not have been recalled?
Part of my role at a startup was managing the facilities team on top of my IT manager role.
One day, our CEO emailed the team to let us know his private toilet wasn’t working (Not clogged, just no water supply).
One of the guys had a plumber out and took care of it.
I told him to “reply all” to the email letting him and the team know that it’s fixed. He thought I meant to send an email to “all employees”
Everyone (about 600 employees) there got an email saying “Mr. XXXXX’s toilet is working again” 🤣
At least it wasn’t a dick pic with some insults to your manager…
UNSUBSCRIBE
lmao
Just wait until all the reply alls get started. Congrats you’ll see this email until you leave lol
At my old company – we had a supervisor that emailed everyone WEST of the Mississippi (over 15,000 people) about her ice cream being stolen from the local break room at our 2 story office. 10,000 replies later – they locked her out of the email system for 3 days. What was worse is people saying “take me off this list” and replying ALL. The good result was our executive team ordered a massive upgrade to our corporate email systems a month later. 🙂
the it guy in Singapore should be fired for apparently allow full access the “all company” email.
Unsubscribe storms are hilarious though
HR is like, we dodged a bullet with that guy 😂
It happens. Don’t sweat it. You’re leaving there anyway.
Helluva way to go out
This is why it is good to have a delay on your sent messages. Too many times have I compulsively hit send after finishing an email.
i purposefully sent a company wide email telling our CEO he was a piece of shit knowing i was going to be fired…
it felt so fucking good.
UNSUBSCRIBE
I think that’s pretty terrific.
You’ll look back on this eventually and laugh, like some of us are doing currently. The good news is that you have a new adventure ahead, so congrats!
you are resigning!!!!
who cares what they think, and dont stress
Just curious, how did this result in you having to leave a week earlier? You submitted your resignation letter to HR (and everyone under the sun)…didn’t that start the timer anyways?
My brother was in the navy and their email app had a button for “all hands” which everyone assumed meant everyone on the boat. Well one time his buddy left his email up on a public PC and someone found it and wrote an email that said “I like ice cream it makes me fat” and sent it to all hands.
Well it turns out all hands wasn’t just the boat it was like the entire command. His buddy found this out when the captain called him into his office and asked him why the captain was getting 6am phone calls from the Admiral’s secretary back in DC about his pentient for ice cream.
I find it odd, and honestly a little hard to believe that All Staff would not have a safe senders list. we have all staff and the hoops you have to jump through to justify being on that list is crazy. Even the MD Isn’t allowed, he has to go through internal comms
This is an IT tifu really.
Went out a god damn legend.
My small company only allows a few people to send to everyone.
You’ve never worked a day in corporate but great story. That shit is disabled for this reason
this is what we call a power move
What are you afraid of? They’re definitely not gonna fire you lol
The only thing worse than the “All Staff” email error are the people who reply all to them. They f’d up but you doubled down on it by showing you don’t check who you are replying to.
Is this real? Why didn’t you immediately recall the email and delete it? If you had immediately recalled it 99% of the people on the distribution list wouldn’t’ve seen it.
Oops. You did not kill ANYONE. You made a mistake. It is called being human. Forget it and move on to your new job.
I read this and broke out to a cold sweat. Thanks for the corporate upgrade to the ol’ “I’m late for an exam that I can’t find and didn’t study for” nightmare.