Email Backfires

School District 204 (Naperville area) board president Mark Metzger got his neck in a ringer last week for sending out a nastygram by email. He thought it was going only to Board members, but a copy also went to the father of a student. You can read about it at www.dailyherald.com/story/?id=275695&#storycomments

I was reminded of three misdirected emails I received from Woodstock District 200 staff members over the years. It seems there was a glitch in the school district's email system that desperately needed fixing.

The problem occurred when a school district employee responded to an email that had been forwarded. Sometimes the reply went back only to the original sender, and not to the person who had forwarded the original email.

Consider this example. I wrote to a Department head with questions about a student's program. That person forwarded my email to a teacher and sent me a cc:, which I thought was a very professional and business-like step that I didn't expect. Upon receiving the cc:, I knew there would be a delay while the department person gathered background information for her reply to me.

What I didn't expect was the next email I received. It was a very rude venting from the teacher with some coarse language in it. Fortunately, I received it late on a Friday afternoon and did not immediately hit "Reply" to send a message with like language.

So I just sat on it and waited. A couple of days later the teacher contacted the Department head to ask if she had received the teacher's email. Learning that she hadn't, the teacher checked her Sent box and saw that her email had gone only to me.

Actually, I expected the teacher to be a little embarrassed about the tone of her email, but she wasn't. I realized she was frustrated and, in a conversation with the principal, reminded him that I had been complaining for months that the teacher was overworked, understaffed and needed more classroom help.

And there were two other times that I received misdirected replies that followed the same pattern.

Each time I alerted District 200 to the error and urged them to find the glitch and fix it. It was not a "Reply All" error. The error was deep inside the email system and resulted in messages going to unintended recipients.

This, of course, is not good in any business. Have you ever received an email that was about you, but not intended for you? Take this week's survey now.