We all know it’s worth the extra few seconds to scan that email draft or go through an essay before submitting it.
And yet, we’re often so excited it’s done we just hit send without a second thought.
Then, in a bizarre example of masochism, we read through the whole thing after it’s too late to change anything.
Of course, it’s during that powerless read-through that we see it—the most embarrassingly timed and placed typo ever.
Redditor DoesntUnderstands was apparently in the mood to have people relive all that cringing.
He asked:
“What is the most damage you’ve ever done with a typo?”
These Redditors made the same mistake.
“g and t are very close on the keyboard and for this reason ‘regards’ is not my favorite email closing.” — AdeptAdaptor
“I mistyped ‘regards’ on an angrily worded email. I was told by my manager that, no matter how annoyed I was, I shouldn’t call people that. It’s hard to explain that it was an accident given the tone of the email.”
“Always take a second and proof read any angry email. And then don’t send it. It isn’t worth it.” — the_hair_of_aenarion
This kind of mistake came up a lot.
“My father in law had just died. I text my other half saying, ‘how’s your dad going?’ Instead of ‘how’s your day going? He was not impressed.” — pooches4life
“Asked a co-worker in a group IM if he’d mind me using his d*ck as mine didn’t seem to be working properly.”
“I meant dock, for my laptop.”
“It wasn’t something I got in trouble for but it’s one of those typo’s that will probably come up in conversation for the next several years.” — phormix
“I used to work for a museum booking group visits and educational programs for tour companies and schools.”
“Was working on a reservation and they had only told me how many students were in the group, but I also needed the number of adults. So, I sent an email to the teacher:
” ‘Hello *teachername*, we’ll also need to know approximately how many sluts will be visiting from your school.’ “
“Luckily, they had a sense of humor:
” ‘Not sure how many of us are sluts, but if you meant “adults” it’s going to be around 8 or 10.’ ” — smokehidesstars
One mistake almost reached a large audience.
“I worked in the architecture industry for many years. One of the aspects of the job, when we were designing a new building in a community, was to present our plans to the public in a place like a community centre or a school gym, and they would be able to voice their concerns.”
“The presentation materials would usually take the form of panels printed on foamcore board and placed around the space; these presentations are called public consultations.”
In one instance, we had printed about 30 boards with the title ‘X Project Public Consultation’ at the top, only the ‘l’ had been forgotten in the word ‘public.’ Hilarity ensued.”
“Luckily the mistake was caught before they placed all the boards, and they were quickly reprinted, which cost a lot of money. If it had been ANY other letter we would have let it slide.” — ToothbrushGames
This one came before they even had the job.
“Submitting forms for a job, got a real awkward call back – ‘Did you mean to check this box saying that yes, you’ve been been involved with illegal distribution of controlled substances? Because you checked no on all the other questions about criminal behavior…’ “
“Nice of the guy to give me a chance to correct it, at least.” — BitterFuture
One Redditor’s screw-up could have been costly, literally.
“My first finance job had to do with managing corporate cash. I was moving funds from one account to another and accidentally hit an extra zero. I ended up moving $30MM instead of $3MM.”
“Luckily it was between internal accounts, so it was easily reversible, but I didn’t know that at the time. I shat my pants and my boss let me panic for 30 seconds before fixing it.” — Fandorin
Another person was lucky enough to catch people before the holidays.
” ‘Sorry for the incontinence.’ “
“I meant inconvenience, of course. It went out to a group of managers who reported to my boss.”
“We were going to have really limited office coverage for the holidays, so one of their usual processes was going to be delayed, and I was asked to send the official email about how we were going to do business during the couple of days after Christmas.”
“Fortunately, they were great people and we all laughed.” — liniyedf
This typo had the look of some blunt, harsh truth-telling.
“Typing up minutes to a meeting, ‘(company name) was sh** for 10 days over Christmas period and only responded to emergency jobs.’ “
“Not shut, sh**. To be fair all the folks representing that company agreed that their response times were shit due to the fact that they were shut.” — SparkieMark1977
And there is the old double typo.
“Several years ago, I asked my mom if we could go to ‘butt shows’ that weekend. I meant ‘buy shoes.’ “
“No joke, it changed BOTH words to form the most unfortunate sentence ever. I hate my fat thumbs, lol.” — survivetothrive01
Not all cringey mistakes, though, involve a keyboard.
“I wouldn’t say damage to other people but more my self. Was in a mod interview via text for something and the owner just flat out asked me ‘Will you abuse your powers?’ and I meant to say ‘I absolutely will not.’ But I forgot the ‘Not.’ “
“I cringed at my self so I just backed out of the mod interview. Haha.” — TheThirteenthNeef
For a second, this one was tragic.
“A couple years ago my grandpa had surgery for pancreatic cancer. What my mom MEANT to text me is ‘the surgeons will give an update soon’ which instead somehow came out as ‘the surgeons will give up soon’ ” — Tokidoki99
But as far as “damage” goes, this one might take the cake.
“Years ago I took down the entire web infrastructure of a large (millions of daily users) company with a single additional . in a line of PHP code.”
“Does that count?” — recaffeinated
It’s a list that ought to convince us all to double check the things we type before we send them.
But let’s face it, we’ll never do that.
And we’ll just keep cringing along.