A techie closes down the email account of a laid-off company employee -- and an overlooked detail creates a PR nightmare Years ago, I had recently graduated from college and was working at two part-time gigs. My morning job was at a small financial company as the sole IT guy. This small financial company was a child company of a much larger and more famous parent company based in New York. We were allowed to use whatever software we wished, with a few exceptions dictated by the parent company. One of these exceptions was our email software: We were ordered to use a relatively obscure email software made by a famous company. [ Also on InfoWorld: Read memorable Off the Record stories from 2009 in “Tall tales of tech — that happen to be true.” ] I had never used this piece of software before and found many quirks, which made it annoyingly different from more widely used options such as Microsoft Outlook. In my frequent dealings regarding this obscure email software with the parent company’s tech support department, it became clear that no one enjoyed using it and were entirely aware of its many unfixed glitches. On my birthday, I went to my morning job and the head of HR called me over to her office to inform me that a woman in our office — we’ll call her “Jennifer” — was being laid off that day. I was instructed to go to Jennifer’s computer and set her out-of-office email message alerting those who emailed her in the future that she was no longer with the company. I waited until Jennifer had left the building, then logged in to her workstation, opened the obscure email software, and set her out-of-office start date and stop date, as well as the out-of-office message. Next, I clicked OK. I then reset her password and went through all the other steps of closing down her workstation. I went back to my desk and started preparing to leave for my birthday lunch. A coworker came up to me and said he had just received an email from Jennifer saying she was no longer with the company. I told him that the email was correct and that the message was going to be sent to anyone who emailed Jennifer in the future. However, he said that he had not emailed Jennifer that day, and as he described what happened I noticed he had received the email as soon as I had set her out-of-office message. A few more coworkers came by and were wondering why they had received a message from Jennifer saying the same thing. I was puzzled: The out-of-office message usually sends a response to emails, not a broadcast to the company. We didn’t want word of her layoff to spread too quickly, so I started digging to see who had received the email. Everyone in our office reported receiving the email. As I was scratching my head and wondering what happened, Jennifer’s clients started calling in and asking why Jennifer was no longer with the company. This wasn’t good. I called the parent company’s tech support department trying to figure out what happened and who had received the email. More calls about Jennifer started pouring in; some of them were angry clients contacting our CEO directly. Tech support couldn’t think of a reason why the email would have been broadcast. They were trying to trace who the email went to but could not figure it out quickly. I called to skip my birthday lunch and contacted my afternoon part-time job, letting them know I wouldn’t make it that day. At one point, our company’s CEO got on the phone and started yelling at the parent company’s tech support. Tech support started escalating the case as high as it would go. Then, Jennifer herself called in, threatening to sue and demanding to know why her mother received an email saying she was no longer with the company before she had even told her. After three hours of investigation, we figured out what had happened. When I had set a start and end date for the out-of-office message, I had accidentally typed in the previous year for the start date (such as 2008 instead of 2009). The email software, in all its user-unfriendliness, had responded to all emails sent to Jennifer in the last year with the out-of-office message. The message was sent to Jennifer’s friends, family, clients, and more. Jennifer had also apparently subscribed to a few Yahoo groups with her work email (including one for general fans of dogs), and the notice that she no longer had a job was sent to those groups as well. It was a PR disaster. No one at tech support had any idea the email software would respond to backdating the out-of-office message in that way. I could only imagine the damage control that had to be done, none of which I knew any details about. I was fortunate not to get fired that day for a simple typo. No one ever spoke of the incident again. I continued to work there for a few more months until I received a full-time offer from a great company. As for the email software, I’ve never seen it again. The main lesson I learned is remember to check the details. Even the tiniest element can have a very large impact. This story, “Fixing the fallout from an errant out-of-office email,” was originally published at InfoWorld.com. Data Management