Friday, 3rd November 2006.

It could only happen on a Friday

This afternoon's lesson: why you should always, always check who you're sending your emails to.

We've recently been involved in negotiations with another publisher, who were thinking about buying us. To cut a long (not to mention tedious) story short, the negotiations broke down this week. No one is particularly sorry about this; it would have meant more changes and quite possibly redundancy.

A few minutes ago we got an email from the chief executive that read thus:

From: Robertson, Michael
Sent: Friday, November 03, 2006 10:56 AM
To: LIST Global All Staff
Subject: Urgent Staff Announcement
Importance: High

I promised to keep you informed about any major developments.

Today we did receive a final proposal of ____ per share in cash for the entire
company from them. Given our excellent results this year and the budgets for
next year, we believe that this significantly undervalues the company and our
excellent future prospects. The board has consequently rejected this offer and
terminated all discussions.

David and I have every confidence that with more opportunities in front of us
than ever, and the fabulous plans you.ve been presenting to us over the last
few weeks that we will go from strength to strength. We look forward to
building this great company even more ambitiously than before, exploiting the
increased opportunities we have from our enlarged group and doing it ourselves
- so let's crack on!

Kind regards
Michael

Fair enough. A few minutes after that, we had another email from one of the Business Development Managers in the US, who really ought to know better:

From: Phillips, Rachel
Sent: 03 November 2006 16:10
To: Robertson, Michael; LIST Global All Staff
Subject: RE: Urgent Staff Announcement

Hi David,

And you think you work for 'sketchy' people. Let's crack on? Oh jolly hockey
sticks.

Love me

I have no idea who David is, and I daresay the rest of us don't either. I can see her point, really - Michael's chirpy stiff-upper-lip routine sometimes irritates me - but copying her thoughts to the entire company (in every single office, all over the world) was probably a mistake. Oh, and for the record, that 'Recall' function really doesn't work...