Total Recall: Outlook Impossible
Or should that be Microsoft Outlook: Recall Impossible.
Either way, it didnt stop me from being red-faced at work yesterday. It's a long story but i'll keep it as brief as possible.
As you may know, i work for the Carphone Warehouse and every now and then, we sponsor some program or some pop artists or sum'in else.
What normally happens is that if they're gonna come around to the head office, where i work, an email gets sent around from an email alias creaton in thier name.
For example, we would get emails pertaining to Big Brother seemingly from big brother contestants because of the "From" name but probably written by thier PR officer or whatever they call them. Its all cos CPW sponsored the last big brother (if you missed me sayng it)
Anyway that said i'll show you an email that started this whole thing:
From: Robbie Williams
Sent: 16 November 2004 17:05
To: [removed]
Subject: The launch of my Greatest Hits at CPW
Hi everyone at The Carphone Warehouse
You've all heard about something that you should all be getting a little excited about - Me! That’s right, me and my Greatest Hits album is being sold in your stores on a memory card as of this week under your new mobile entertainment brand ‘Play Mobile’, which will roll out across all your stores this week. This launch is an industry first, but everyone’s predicting we’ll all be buying our music in this format before long. I'm delighted to be the first artist to tie-up with you guys in this 'first of it's kind' deal and I know this creates a massive opportunity for everyone. I even heard that in Japan, memory cards are the largest selling accessories in the mobile phone market. Thanks to the Marketing department for that.
I'm not around to help you guys get all your customers excited about this new music format, as I’m on a whistle stop promotional tour of Latin America. I arrived in Mexico City yesterday morning and ahead of me is eight days of performances, photoshoots, interviews, press conferences... and maybe even a little bit of Argentinean football. I’m doing a popular TV show tonight and if you’ve ever been down Mexico way, you’ll know the Otro Rollo show - lots of chat and I’m doing a few tracks live in the studio. Should be fun!
You probably already know a load about Play Mobile - fun on phone from The Carphone Warehouse and it sounds like its going to be huge. I wish you luck with the sales of the album and all the other cool ringtones, games and other memory cards available from Play Mobile.
Adiós
Robbie
Now this was sent to the whole company, not just the Head Office, so shops in London are getting it just as shops in Edinburgh. Now whoever set the mailing list up had made a mistake somehow and set up the Robbie Williams alias had mistakenly set it up to forward any replies to the RW account to everyone in the company. Pretty stupid if you ask me.
Cos as soon as the mail was sent, everyone in the company started getting "Out of office replies" from people that has setup thier autoresponders.
I shd have know something was wrong, but stupid all me rushed to send this to "Robbie". Well y'know sort of poking a little fun:
From: [removed]
Sent: 16 November 2004 17:08
To: Robbie Williams
Subject: RE: The launch of my Greatest Hits at CPW
how's it going with that single mum of yours? last i heard ... actually i dont remember. have fun in saaf amerika.
-- Faf
Alright you may not have heard, but apparently Robbie Williams had found a new woman. A single mother of two, and i thought it might be fun to poke errr... fun at that.
Anyway, what's just happened is that i've send a stupid email out to the whole company.
Yeah everyone. The Boss himself would get a copy.. well his secretaries will. At that point in time, i considered runnig away cos everyone around me was asking what that was about... blah blah.
But it wasnt all embarassing stuff for me. Some people didnt know what was going on and mailed me to ask why... and no surprisingly, it turned out some guys in the company were dating a single mum or two and emailed me to ask wo i was and how i knew. Or to say that they were old news.
I even got one rant about how one guy couldnt stand the "annoying little brat". For obvious reasons, i cant post any of those emails here so i'll stop by saying my inbox is still getting a battering and will probably be for the next couple of weeks.
I had "Read Receipts" turned on. And when i realised what had happened, i tried to "recall" the message with a setting to let me know whether the recall failed or was succesful.