It is a peril of modern communication. You message a company on Facebook to arrange a quote – and end up sending a picture of your bottom. In a Facebook post that went viral, a hairdresser from Wigan relayed her story about being asked by a carpet company to send photographs of her stairs, and mistakenly attaching one of her bare behind. “I’m absolutely mortified,” she wrote on her post, followed by several crying laughing emojis (the company responded in kind, before reassuring her the photo would go no further). “Make sure u check what u click,” she concluded.
There have been other examples of photos that have been accidentally shared and widely covered: the Canadian woman who, in 2012, uploaded a hilarious photo of Nicolas Cage instead of a covering letter for a job application; in 2015, a man in Chicago lost a job offer after he mistakenly sent nude photos of himself to the human resources manager. More recently, a test email – which wasn’t meant to be sent at all – was distributed by the US embassy in Australia, titled “meeting” and containing a photograph of a cat wearing a Cookie Monster suit.
On Twitter, people have shared some joyful examples (if true – the “I accidentally sent this to my boss” tweet is often too good to be believable). Instead of his coursework, one person attached a photograph of a cat eyeing up a pile of hotdogs. Another sent a work email with a picture of Buddy from the film Elf attached. Another mistakenly sent her boss an illustration of a sad-faced heart with the words: “I just want a cuddle.”
Less cute, but equally excruciating, is Guardian reader Shahnawaz Khan’s experience. At university he was an activist and served as the national secretary of one of India’s largest student organisations. He sent a report about a potentially discriminatory job advert to three colleagues, including a superior.
“I woke up the next morning when a senior colleague called to ask if I had lost my mind.” Instead of the job advertisement, the attachment was a news story in Hindi, about a man doing something unspeakable to a dog (leading the poor animal to lose its appetite). A friend had downloaded it on to Khan’s computer and saved it with a similar file name. “I spent the entire day embarrassed and in fear of being asked to explain, or worse.”
New technology has added to the minefield. Spare a thought for Annabel Kelly’s husband. She reports that her 10-year-old daughter “told Siri to ‘call me super duper poopy poop’ on my husband’s work iPad. He sent professional emails with this new display name.”
