Oh Sh**! Did I just do that?

Hi

Okay, so we have this process where we submit things (ie, prompts) to a vendor of ours here at work for translation. While doing this, we can include comments like "Please translate asap" etc. for each request, which is what I did.

But for each language we require translations of, we have to submit this request/order individually (kind of a pain) and so to save time, I naturally copied and pasted the "Please translate asap" comment over and over again.

While doing this, I took a quick break to reply to someone's personal email (personal meaning Gmail, not personal work email). In my response to that personal email, I copied and pasted a sentence of the friend's email so I could address it in the reply b/c it was funny. After sending the email, I continued back to work and continued submitting the request and corresponding comment ("Please translate asap") for translation.

This is a mechanical process and so I did this rather quickly. A couple minutes into it, I realized that the comment I was copying and pasting for our vendor was not the "Please translate asap" comment I originally assumed (for some reason) that I was copying & pasting. It was the comment from my personal email. I quickly cancelled and took a look at the two previous requests I sent to ensure that I did not include the personal comment in my request. Much to my dismay and utter carelessness, I found that I submitted those two requests with the personal comment from my email...

Now, may be you're thinking that, "Oh, that's not too bad. I mean, how bad or stupid could that comment be, Imran?" Well, let me finish...

And so the personal comment from my email that I accidentally copied and pasted into the work request reads as follows, "I'm going to bitch-slap you..."

I freaked out when I realized that I copied this into my professionally requested order. I was thinking, "Okay, ppl get fired for this type of thing." And then I thought, "Why do I suddenly feel like I'm in Office Space?"

I immediately sent an email to the vendor to 1) discuss my request and 2) apologize and clarify what happened. Then I ran around the office to see if anyone in mgmnt happened to be around, but no one was because it was 8pm. So I called my mgr and told him that I accidentally sent a comment that I shouldn't have. He was like as long as it's not sexually, religiously, or racially offensive, you're okay. And I thought to myself, okay...this could be sexually offensive. So I told him the comment and he was of course like, "Well, obviously you shouldn't have done that." (No kidding!) But he was totally cool and was like "Nothing will happen, it's a good thing this is a vendor and not the client otherwise we'd be doing months of clean-up work on this, I'll talk to the HR person about this who will probably laugh it off, and the vendor shouldn't mind so long as no one high-strung works there." Then I was like, "Yeah, I'm hoping that UK mentality (they're a lot more laid back about being PC) kicks in." Then we kinda laughed about it.

That was last night.

This morning...nothing major happened, mashaAllah! Vendor replied back to my email, but only the business portion.

Later today, I received an email from the Associate Director of Operations in the Chicago Office that stated, "PLEASE SEE ME ASAP." It was at that point that I realized that one's heart can beat approximately 1,000,000 times/second. So I stopped by her office and she's like, "I bet you know what this is about." And I was like "Yeah, the prompts, right?" And she's like, "Yes. This is to let you know that it has been escalated to mgmnt." OMG! I wanted to cry, but her talk continues..."But we totally understand b/c you wouldn't do something like that, it was from a personal email and nothing company-related, and you've been under a lot of pressure/stress lately." Heart beat drops to 100,000 beats/second. She then tried her best to be serious and was like, "Not to make fun of the situation, but it was a good laugh." Salvation! And then we basically just laughed about it the rest of time. Like hardcore LOL-ing, which was cool.

At the end she's like, "Yeah, no worries. I know you wouldn't put a request like that. Just use asterisks if you're using that type language of language" (she said that last part laughingly). And then I joked, "Yeah, i'm generally not really in the habit of telling clients/vendors to do something otherwise i'll bitch-slap them..."

So now the issue is done with (iA/mA). Whew! :)

Of course, a couple of the guys at work will make fun of me and make sure I never forget this......(sigh)......what craziness, dude...

Could you imagine receiving, "I'm going to bitch-slap you" from your client?! I'm still LOL-ing, actually...

Cheers