Remember as kids we could just yell "Do over!" if you happened to screw up in a big way during some childhood game or other? Wouldn't it be great if life were really like that?
I'm sure we all have moments in our lives that warranted a hit of the old reset button. Several drunken calls to ex-girlfriends spring immediately to mind, for me. I think one of them involved singing "Feelings" over the phone, but she never spoke to me again, so I can't confirm that troubling and Southern Comfort-blurred memory.
But, in today's insta-message world of email, more and more people are learning that one careless or, in some cases, outright stupid act can come back to bite you on the proverbial nether regions.
The Internet is full of stories of people who've gained infamy through fast and loose emails. In fact, there's even a book called Great Email Disasters as well as a variety of web sites that chronicle some of the best and worst email blunders in cyber-history.
One particular story tells of an intern working at a law firm who emailed a friend working at another law firm. In the email, the intern told his friend about his two-and-a-half-hour lunch breaks, and how he was not doing any work whatsoever.
He wrote disparagingly about the company, calling the "old fogeys" at the law firm "morons" and said he'd probably be made partner within a year. Unfortunately, the intern sent the email out to the entire firm's mailing list, instead of just to his friend. Needless to say, he didn't make partner.
Or how about Headmaster Patrick Hazlewood who, along with his school's bursar Barry Worth, jointly received an emailed complaint from local pensioner Mary Kelly about some misbehaviour by their pupils?
"Tell her to get stuffed," typed Hazlewood, thinking his response was only going to his colleague. Alas, he hit "reply all."
Many of us have committed email blunders akin to those examples, inadvertently sending private or damning messages to a large group, or to the wrong person altogether.
Developers at Google's Gmail must have had some similarly bad experiences in the email department. They've recently released a handy setting on the web-based mail application that could help mitigate our occasional moronic lapses.
Called Undo Send, the setting (when enabled) gives Gmail users five seconds to call back their email once they've hit send. Okay, five seconds isn't all that long a time, admittedly. But it may save some poor shmuck from losing his job, girlfriend and dignity because he clicked the wrong thingy.
The folks at Gmail also seem to understand man's propensity for combining an impulsive nature with alcohol. Complementing the new Undo Send feature is another setting appropriately called Mail Goggles.
When enabled, Mail Goggles makes you solve simple math problems before sending your emails late at night, just in case you've been out on the town and now want to profess your undying affection for someone the classy way - in an email.
Now if only there were a way to take back slurred, off-key renditions of Feelings.
Do over!
