my mass email screw-up

[AndrewO]

I'm a web programmer, and build website applications. A few years ago I was working on a project for a client - a HUGE company, everyone would know the name of it if I put it here. They were a very demanding client, and I kept having to make endless changes and redo things over and over until they were happy with it. I was putting in a LOT of overtime, working late almost every day and sometimes on weekends as well.

The time came when staff members were supposed to start using the system. As part of the kickoff, the system was supposed to send out an announcement email to staff, giving them their login details and inviting them to start using it. Just like all other parts of the project they had a million last minute changes, and so I was having to make changes to the code, send them a test email so they could review it, and then make the changes they wanted. Finally they were satisfied with it, and I made the final updates, saved the changes, and pressed the send button, happy to be finally finished with it.

About an hour later we got a call from one of the staff members, complaining about a problem with the email they had received. We ask them to forward it so we can look at it, and when we get it, it was like 4 emails stuck together in one. And then they call again, saying a lot of people's emails had problems! We get a few more emails to look at, and I go back to my code, and I'm in shock. I'd made a small typo in the programming when I made the last update, and so each time the system sent a new email, it wasn't clearing the old one, and so each email sent had all the previous ones included in it! And this went out to like 400 people, giving them the names and login passwords of the other users!

It was a total nightmare, and I was the one responsible! I went to see my manager and told him the whole story, and that I was sorry, and would resign to take responsibility. To my surprise he was very calm about it, told me that I was a good worker and he didn't want to see me leave, and that it was just a simple mistake that had become a disaster because of overwork and bad luck. He then called the client, informed them what had happened and apologized, and smoothed things over. They were mad as hell at first, but after a couple days they calmed down and the relationship actually went back to normal. As for me, I was terrified for the rest of the project - I'd check and recheck things over and over, and I couldn't bring myself to send any more emails - I'd ask my manager to do the test and then press Send himself.

[Guest]

that's crazy!! I'm so glad something like that didn't happen to me, but I'm sorry it happened to you!!