People share their most painfully embarrassing work-email typos: 'Have a lonely weekend'

As a professional with skin in the word game, I have a strange relationship with typos. When I’m editing someone else’s story and happen to catch one, I feel a slight swell of pride, as if I just made the world just a tiny bit more precise. But if, God forbid, I happen to make one myself and see my editor mark up my text in a Google Doc, I shrivel into a shell of a human, seeking out the nearest hole to crawl inside. (Not literally, but I do own a shovel.) And all this drama because—to quote a real example that I tweeted about back in 2016—I mistakenly referred to The Beatles’ 1968 classic "Happiness Is a Warm Gun" as "Happiness Is Warm Gum"? (I was hoping Juicy Fruit would use it as their slogan, but alas…)

It’s crazy, indeed, how much weight one missing consonant or extra vowel can carry. And those typos are especially consequential in work emails, set against an assumed backdrop of professionalism—where we’re not as likely to let our hair down, where we’re constantly scanning each others’ words to decipher a co-worker's tone. It’s the perfect channel in which to deeply embarrass yourself—and as a viral Instagram video recently proved, most of us have done so at some point in our careers.

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The most awkward work-email typos

Corporate Dudes explored this topic in a post subtitled "POV: The moment after you send an important email." The clip, soundtracked by Daniel Powter’s 2005 piano-pop hit "Bad Day," shows someone freaking out after sending a message that, um, definitely does not say "touch base." The comments are excellent as Instagram users share their own real-life examples of digital workplace humiliation.

Here are some of the obvious awkward-email highlights:

"Have a lonely weekend"

"Client name is Stan. I wrote 'Hi Satan'"

"I told guests I wait listed them for an early morning execution instead of excursion"

“Genital reminder”

"Let's talk shorty"

"Have told people I am ‘very busty’ instead of busy - and also that I am ‘looking at the pubic sector’ instead of public sector. Both mortifying."

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All relatable, all funny, all physically cringe-worthy. And you can find some equally notable examples on Reddit. One user recalled a co-worker writing "facilititties" on an email with roughly 20 copied. "You could unanimously hear a roar in our two-story building," they wrote. "I was laughing so hard my stomach hurt." In a separate thread, someone else fessed up to this simple, almost elegant example: "'Please do hesitate to contact me.’ I forgot the 'not.'" (Sometimes less is more.) Elsewhere, another Redditor recalled sending an email to "over 1,000 staff members" after their upcoming shifts—but, you guessed it, they "missed out [on] the 'f.'"

How can we move past the sting of a workplace gaffe?

Apparently making a fool of yourself at work is one of the few things we can all relate to. But one person in the Instagram comments had a valid question: "What do you do after? Asking for my friend." There are a lot of techniques you can use to move past an embarrassing gaffe—including those recently shared by Ask Kimberly, a relationship and dating expert who shares advice via TikTok. Her first suggestion: "act totally unaffected, as if this thing literally did not happen to you."

That's easier said than done if you wrote "genital reminder" in an email, but those are valuable words of wisdom nonetheless.

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